A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.5

c14.5

We further know that Açvaghosha's *Buddha-charita*, or "Doings of Buddha," was translated into Chinese between 414 and 421 a.d. This work not only calls itself a *mahākāvya*, or "great court epic," but is actually written in the Kāvya style. Açvaghosha was, according to the Buddhist tradition, a contemporary of King Kanishka, and would thus belong to the first century a.d. In any case, it is evident that his poem could not have been composed later than between 350 and 400 a.d. The mere fact, too, that a Buddhist monk thus early conceived the plan of writing the legend of Buddha according to the rules of the classical Sanskrit epic shows how popular the Brahmanical artificial poetry must have become, at any rate by the fourth century a.d., and probably long before.