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SEPTEMBER, 1903.) MATRICETA AND THE MAHARAJAKANIKALEKHA.
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MATRICETA AND THE MAHARAJAKANIKALEKHA.
BY F. W. THOMAS. TN a well-known chapter of his history of Indian Buddhism (trans. pp. 88 to 93), Tāranātha 1 has given us a fairly full account of an ācārya Mātriceta, who, living, he says, in the time of Bindusāra, son of Candragupta, and of his minister Cāņakya, was a renowned author of hymns and other works. Täranätha states that this ācārya was identical with a previously named DurdharşaKals, and was also known under a variety of other names, Süra, Asvaghoya, Pitriceța, Durdharsa, Dharmika-Subhūti, and Maticitra. His original name as a child was Kāla.
The importance of Mätřiceta may be estimated from the fact that, according to Tāranātha, his hymns are, like the word of Buddha, attended with great blessing, inasmuch as he was foretold by • Buddha himself. His hymns are known in all lands,' and he was famed as common to the orthodox
of both the greater and the lesser vehicle': and again at the time when Mātriceța was converted *to Buddhism the number of heretics and brahmans in the monasteries of the four regions, who entered the spiritual order, was very great. People thought that, if the greatest ornament of the Brahmans, Durd harga, had shaken off his own system like dust, this Buddhist doctrine must be 'a very great marvel' (p. 91). In like manner we find the Chinese traveller, I-tsing, relating that Mātřiceta 'by his great literary talent and virtues excelled all the learned men of his age. Even men
like Asanga and Vasubandhu admired him greatly .....Two of his hymns were learned by every monk . .. of both the Mabāyāna and Hinayāna schools' (trans. pp. 166-7).
These statements suffice to prove that Mātřiceta was a considerable figure in Indian Buddhist literature, a fact, indeed, of which we should ask no further evidence if we could accept the accounts which identify him with the authors of the Buddhacarita and the Jātska-mālā. It will be, accordingly, of interest to show how far the legends agree with what we can establish as fact.
Of the persons identified by Taranātha with this Mātřiceta we may at once exclude two, namely, Triratnadāsa and Dhārmika-Subhūti, the former of whom was, as I hope to have proved elsewhere, a contemporary of the philosopher Dignāga of the 5th-6th century and the latter of a still later date. At the same time we may put aside the name of Pitsiceta, known only from Tāranātha and - if we disregard its Tibetan equivalent Pha.khol, which belongs to the medical writer Vägbhata (Tāranātha, trans. p. 311 n, to p. 90, 1. 5) - only in this connection. It is true that, as Wassiliew remarks in the note just cited, the father of Vägbhata bore a name, Samghagupta, resembling that given as belonging to Mātriceța's father, namely, Samghagahya, and perhaps therefore we must render Pha khol here also by Vägbhata (not Pitřiceta) and understand Täranātha to #gert the identity of this author with Mātriceța. In that case, the name of the latter's father must be considered doubtful, as soon as we question this identity. But when Wassiliew goes on to suggest that Mātriceta's name also is a mere translation of the Tibetan Malchol, which itself was then an intentional alteration of Pha khol, this cannot be allowed. For on this supposition the name Mātricețá would have been unknown in India - at least until a late age by borrowing from Tibet - whereas it was familiar there, as we know from I-tsing, in the 7th century. If the name Pitřiceta ever existed, and if it was ever connected with Mātřiceta, this must have happened in India and at an earlier age.
The name Maticitra rests not merely on the authority of Taranātha : it occurs, as we shall see below, in the colophons to some of Mātriceța's works as given in the Tanjur, It can be shown that such colophons are independent evidence. But it is no less true that they are incapable, full of errors as their Sanskrit transliterations are, of distinguishing consistently between Mātriceta and Maticitra. The latter form I have found in six colophons : but we have also Matricița, Maticitu,
Album Kern, pp. 405-8; cf. Mr. Lévi's article in the Bulletin de l'École Français d'Extreme Orient, Vol. III. Pp. 49-50 n.
