A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s6.t3.26

v2.c19.s6.t3.26

It is therefore only correct to say that the Lalita-Vistara offers us very old traditions concerning the Buddha legend, as well as some which are centuries later. It is an important source for ancient Buddhism only in those passages which agree with the Pāli texts and other Sanskrit texts such as the Mahāvastu. It is wrong, however, to regard the whole Lalita-Vistara as a good, ancient source for our knowledge of Buddhism, as has been done, notably by É. Senart in his “Essai sur la légende du Buddha.”² Neither does the Lalita-Vistara give us information on the “popular Buddhism” of the early period, as Louis de La Vallée Poussin affirms.³ It is, however, most informative as regards the development of the Buddha legend from its earliest beginnings, when only the chief events in the life of the great founder of the religion are adorned with miracles, down to that boundless deification of the Master, in which, from the beginning to the end of his career, he appears mainly as a god above all gods. On this account the work is of immense value from the point of view of the history of religion. From the point of view of the history of literature, too, the Lalita-Vistara is one of the most important works of Buddhist scripture. Though it is not yet an actual Buddha epic, it contains all the germs of such an epic; and it is from the ballads and episodes as preserved in the earliest portions of the Lalita-Vistara, though probably not from the Lalita-Vistara itself, that Aśvaghoṣa, the greatest poet of the Buddhists, created his magnificent epic Buddha-Carita, “life of the Buddha.”¹