Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c19.s2.4

c19.s2.4

Equally vague in date is the famous Lalitavistara,² whose title, ‘Full account of the Play’ of the Buddha marks its full acceptance of the supramundane character of the Buddha. It is clearly the biography of the master according to the Sarvāstivādin school, remodelled finally as a Mahāyāna Vaipulyasūtra as it expressly calls itself, in which the humanity of the founder of the faith has disappeared. Its date is uncertain, since we do not know how far our text represents what was translated into Chinese about A. D. 300. But the parallelism between the text and Gandhāran art¹ suggests that Buddha worship flourished in the second century A. D. and much of the Lalitavistara may go back to that date; it contains probably still older material. More precise dating would be possible, if we could be sure that it was from it, as it stands, that Açvaghoṣa derived the material for his Buddhacarita, but that is far from certain.