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NOVEMBER, 1883.)
BOOK NOTICES.
313
BOOK NOTICES. THE SACRED BOOKS of the EAST, Edited by F. Max Mahakâsyapa, whereas the Chinese versiot con
Müller : Volume_XIX.The FO-SHO-HING-TSANKING, A Life of Buddha, by Asvaghosha Bodhisat.
tains 11 vargas more, continuing the story down tva; translated from Sanskrit into Chinese by to the division of the Sariras, and Prof. Beal Dharmaraksha, A.D. 420, and from Chinese into English by SAMUEL BEAL. (Oxford : 1883).
thinks this may arise from our Sanskrit MSS. The publication of the Sacred Books proceeds
being incomplete, rather than that the additions apace,-nineteen volumes having been issued and were made by some other writer before the Sansfour more announced as being in the press.
krit work was carried to China. The volume by Prof. Beal adds another to the Like all other Oriental Lives of Buddha, it various Lives of Buddha we now possess in dwells on his teaching with a tiresome amount of English, translated from Tibetan, Burmese, and reiteration. Written five centuries after the death Chinese sources. The translator, in his introduc- of the Founder, the body of the discourses put tion, mentions that he had first begun upon a into his mouth in this work must be regarded as translation of the Phu yao king, an early Chinese apocryphal, but the doctrines they contain are none version of the Lalita-vistara, made by a monk the less the legitimate outcome of his teaching. whose name was also Dharmaraksha, in A.D. 308, “There are many passages throughout the poem but from the corruptness of the text and the of great beauty," even in its Chinese dress, the turgidness of the style, this had to be given up translator remarks: "There is also much that is when about three-fourths complete. It is, he dry and abstruse, yet we cannot doubt that in that tells us, in eight chapters, and belongs to the day and among those people, the great poem' of expanded class of Satras. In it "the story of Asvaghôsha must have had considerable populaBuddha's life is told from his birth to his death, rity. Hence the translations of it are numerous." but in the exaggerated and wearisome form As a specimen of the tone of this Buddhist writer peculiar to the works of this (expanded) school. we may quote the following passage from Varga It would seem as if the idea of merit attaching to
19 (vv. 1543-47) describing the meeting of king the reproduction of every word of the sacred Suddhôdana with his son, after the latter had books had led the later writers, not only to assumed the role of a Buddha : reproduce the original, but to introduce, by an "Furthermore, he (Suddhodana Raja] thought easy but tiresome method, the repetition of a with himself how he had long ago desired (this simple idea under a multitude of verbal forms, interview) which had now happened unawares and so secure additional merit." Of this work he (without arrangement). Meantime, his son in has given us a good sample in a long note (pp. silence took a seat, perfectly composed and with 344-371) appended to the present volume.
unchanged countenance (1543). Thus, for some The introduction further contains some interest- time sitting opposite each other, with no expresing details on the divisions of Buddhism, the sion of feeling the king reflected thus): 'How formation of the Northern schools, a list of the desolate and sad does he now make my heart, as various Lives of Buddha in Chinese, of which he that of a man who, fainting, longs for water upon enumerates fourteen, the earliest being the Fo-pen- the road, espies a fountain pure and cold (1544) hing-king or Buddhacharita-sútra of Asvaghosha(?) with haste he speeds towards it and longs to translated by Få-lån in A.D. 68; and to this he adds drink, when suddenly the spring dries up and disremarks on the value of the Chinese translations. appears. Thus, now I see my son, his well-known
Asvaghôsha Bodhisattva, the author of the features as of old (1545); But how estranged original Sanskrit work the Buddhacharita-kdvya, his heart! and how his manner high and lifted was the twelfth Bauddha patriarch' and a con- up! There are no grateful overflowings of soul, temporary of the great king Kanishka who prohis feelings seem unwilling to express themselves; bably ruled in the end of the first century. He cold and vacant (there he sits)! and like a thirsty was a native of Srivasti, and a Brahman by birth, man before a dried-up fountain (so am I) (1546). Stil but was converted to Buddhism, and travelled distant, thus (they sat) with crowding thoughts about as a musician and preacher, and seems to have rushing through the mind, their eyes full-met, been the popular hymn writer of the Buddhists." but no responding joy; each looking at the other
The Sanskrit MSS. of the Buddhacharita, seemed as one who, thinking of a distant friend, however, break off at the end of the 17th section gazes by accident upon his pictured form." (1547). or varga, after the account of the conversion of This scene pictures with studied clearness
For the contents of this work see Sénart's Légende Ind. Ant. vol. II, pp. 59-63, 207n. ; vol. IV, p. 362; du Buddha, p. 497 n.
vol. VI, p. 218; vol. ix, p. 259; vol. X, pp. 213-227; Ind. Ant. vol. IV, pp. 141-141; vol. IX, pp. 149, vol. XI, p. 129. 316; vol. XI, p. 49; Beal's Abst. of Four Lectures, pp. 95 ff. 1
