Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s9.12

c8.s9.12

It was in this period, again, that Mahayana Buddhism grew and spread, and it must be admitted that the literature of the Mahāyāna school bears on its face the impress of this age of aesthetic refinement and culture. Its great preacher, Aśvaghoṣa, sought to popularise his faith by writing dramas and magnificent poetical works instead of works on dry dialectics and abstruse theology. The few fragments that we possess of Aśvaghoṣa's dramas, Śāriputraprakaraṇa and others, show that in at least one of them the gaṇikā played almost as important a part as in Bhāsa's Cārudatta, and that too in a work where Buddha himself makes his appearance with some of his dearest disciples. Aśvaghoṣa was in the first place a theologian and a dialectician as his *Vajrasūcī* would go to prove, but in an age of great aesthetic culture, he had to adapt himself to the refined tastes of his audience and so he sweetened the tasteless doses of his dry theological doctrines with the honey of poetry and music, and he knew how to mix the ingredients with all the skill of a master. The *Lalitavistara* also has succeeded eminently in combining intense love and reverence for the Master with poetic skill and grace. The *Divyāvadāna* and the *Mahāvastu* also appear to have received, at least, some additions in this era of *kathās* and *ākhyānas* of which we find a frequent mention in Vātsyāyana.¹