INTRODUCTION.

"Having searched for them everywhere and not found them, four cantos have been made by me, Amritânanda—the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth." He adds the date 950 of the Nepalese era, corresponding to 1830 A.D., and we have no difficulty in identifying the author. Râgendralâl Mitra, in his Nepalese Buddhist Literature, mentions Amritânanda as the author of two Sanskrit treatises and one in Newârî; he was likely the father of Gunânanda, the long-serving pandit at the British Residency in Kâtmându, whose son, Indrânanda, currently holds the office. Dr. D. Wright informs me that the family seems to have been the recognized historians of the country and the keepers of the manuscript treasures belonging to various temples. These four books are included in this translation as an interesting literary curiosity. The first portion of the fourteenth book agrees partially with the Tibetan and Chinese versions, and Amritânanda may have had access to an imperfect copy of that portion of the original; however, his account thereafter is entirely independent and bears no relation to the other two versions.

In my preface to the edition of the Sanskrit text, I attempted to show that Asvaghosha’s poem appears to have influenced succeeding poets of the classical period in India. When we compare the description in the seventh book of the Raghuvamsa—of ladies of the city crowding to see Prince Aja as he passes from the Svayamvara (where Princess Bhogyâ has chosen him as her husband)—with the episode in the third book of the Buddha-karita (verses 13–24), or compare the description of Kâma’s assault on Siva in the Kumârasambhava with that of Mâra’s temptation of Buddha in the thirteenth book, we can hardly fail to trace a connection. A similar resemblance exists between the description in the fifth book of the Râmâyana—where the monkey Hanumat enters Râvana’s palace by night and sees his wives asleep in the seraglio in various unconscious attitudes—and the description in the fifth book of the present poem, where Buddha, on the night of his permanent departure from home, sees the same unconscious sight in his own palace.