A History of Sanskrit Literature c33.s7.3

c33.s7.3

Much more important is the *Mahāvastu*,⁴ a Vinaya text of the Lokottaravādin school of the Mahāsāṅghikas, which presents us with a partial Buddha biography, combined with much miscellaneous matter, including many Jātaka stories of the Buddha in previous births. It reveals a new attitude in its account of the ten stages through which a Bodhisattva must move to achieve Buddhahood, in its insistence on the miraculous birth of Bodhisattvas without parental intervention and on the great number of Buddhas, and in such episodes as the Buddhānusmṛti which is a panegyric of the Buddha in the usual Stotra form of the Kāvya literature. Its date is utterly uncertain, for its structure is complex, as is revealed by style and language; references to such late matters as Chinese speech and writing, a Horāpāṭhaka, and the Huns show that the final redaction need not have been before the fourth century A. D. The language is mixed Sanskrit, both in prose and verse, for verse frequently alternates with prose, versions of the same matter being given sometimes side by side in two accounts. The less good the Sanskrit, the older in many cases the passage, but no absolute criterion is possible. From the point of view of doctrine the work yields all but nothing of importance.