THE BUDDHA-KARITA OF ASVAGHOSHA.

A solitary stanza (VIII, 13) is quoted from the Buddha-karita in Râyamukuta’s commentary on the Amarakosha I, 1. 1, 2, and also by Uggvaladatta in his commentary on the Unâdi-sûtras I, 156. Additionally, five stanzas attributed to Asvaghosha appear in Vallabhadeva’s Subhâshitâvali. These bear a great resemblance to his style, though they are not found in the currently available portion of this poem Professor Peterson has remarked that two of these five stanzas occur in Bhartrihari’s Nîti-sataka..

The Buddha-karita was translated into Chinese For the present, we have classified the Buddha-karita with the Mahâyâna Sûtras due to a lack of more precise information. by Dharmaraksha in the fifth century, and a translation of this was published by the Reverend S. Beal in the present series. It was also translated into Tibetan in the seventh or eighth century. Both the Tibetan and Chinese versions consist of twenty-eight chapters and carry the life of Buddha through to his entrance into Nirvâna and the subsequent distribution of his sacred relics. The Tibetan version appears to be much closer to the original Sanskrit than the Chinese; in fact, its verbal accuracy often allows us to reproduce the exact words of the original, as specific Sanskrit words are consistently represented by the same Tibetan equivalents—for instance, in the case of prepositions prefixed to verbal roots. I express my sincere hope that we may soon have a published edition and translation of the Tibetan version, provided a scholar can be found to complete the late Dr. Wenzel’s unfinished work. He had devoted significant time and thought to this project; I consulted him on several points of difficulty, and it is from him that I derived all my information regarding the Tibetan renderings. This Tibetan version promises to be of great help in restoring the many corrupt readings that persist in our faulty Nepalese manuscripts.

Only thirteen books of the Sanskrit poem claim to be the composition of Asvaghosha; the final four books are an attempt by a modern Nepalese author to supply the lost original. He tells us this honestly in his colophon.