Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s2.18

c19.s2.18

Apart from the Sūtras, and of not less importance, are works by authors whose personality is more or less known to us. The earliest in time perhaps is Aṣvaghoṣa, son of Suvarṇākṣī, educated as a Brahmin, then an adherent of the Sarvāstivādins and later a precursor of the Mahāyāna. His date is obscure, for the tradition of his connexion with Kaniṣka is not altogether supported by the tone of the references to that king contained in the Sūtrālaṃkāra, but it is not improbable that he flourished under or shortly after that prince, whose own date, however, still remains in controversy; a date about A. D. 100 is not improbable for the poet. His great epic, the Buddhacarita¹ is based either on the Lalitavistara or on the same materials, and, save in its spirit of devotion to the Buddha, is not markedly different from the Hīnayāna. The Sūtrālaṃkāra,² even through the medium of a translation from the Chinese, shows much merit; it is a collection of edifying legends of the Jātaka type, in which Aṣvaghoṣa applies the resources of his poetic spirit to adorn the teachings of the faith. The Vajrasūcī,³ a polemical tract in which the author seeks to overthrow the Brahmanical caste system on the score of citations from the Veda, the Mahābhārata and the Mānava Dharmaśāstra, is of dubious origin, for by one source it is attributed to Dharmakīrti. Far more important is the issue regarding the *Mahāyānaśraddhotpāda*,¹ the Rise of Faith in the Mahāyāna, which is one of the best of Buddhist philosophical treatises, and worthy even of Açvaghoṣa’s fame. The doctrine in this work, however, distinctly advanced; it represents a form of the Vijñānavāda in which the ideas of suchness and the Tathāgatagarbha, womb of the Tathāgata, are developed in an absolutist sense. It is, of course, illegitimate *a priori* to hold that such doctrines could not be adopted or promulgated by Açvaghoṣa, but the evidence for his authorship is not very convincing; the work was rendered into Chinese in 554 and 710 A. D. and our knowledge of it is derived from a translation of this later version. An older Chinese tradition does not contain the attribution to Açvaghoṣa, and it is easy enough to understand how the work was attributed to him later, while it is remarkable, if he were the true author of it that we should not have more convincing evidence of his authorship. We have possibly some ground for doubting the attribution in the fact that we find the doctrine of vacuity alluded to in the *Saundarananda*² which deals with the conversion of Buddha’s half brother Nanda very much against his will, and incidentally gives much information on the faith, and the same doctrine, together with the distinction of absolute and apparent truth, is found in another treatise attributed on Chinese authority to Açvaghoṣa.³ The question is of some historical importance; if Açvaghoṣa were really the author of the *Mahāyānaśraddhotpāda*, then we must assume that the doctrine of idealism developed effectively before that of vacuity. This seems contrary to tradition, and even to probability; the idealism of the Vijñānavāda presents rather the appearance of an effort to render more plausible the negativism of the Madhyamaka. But the material is clearly inadequate to permit of certainty.