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THE INDIAN ANTIQUABY.
[OCTOBER, 1903.
The Sūtrāla kāra sāstra (Ta-lchoang-sen-king-lun ; Nanjio, 1182) purports to be by the Budhisattva Asvaghosha (Ma-ming Pou-sa). The Chinese translation was made by the famous Kumārajiva, under the later Ts'in dynasty, about 405 A.D. Beal, in Buddhist Chinese Literature (31, 101, 105), pointed out the value and interest of the work, and gave long extracts from it. It is a collection of stories, intended to illustrate the Buddha's word. A short sentence (446] from the sutras serves as text for each. The work is worthy of the great teacher, whom the Chinese authorities unanimously name as its author. The vivid and vigorous style, the variety of information, the frequent allasions to Brahmanical legends, and the aggressive controversial tone, all slew it to be by the author of the Buddha-charita and Vajra-sūchi. The discovery of the original would restore a gem to Sanskpit literature, but even in its Chinese form, it is one of the happiest productions of Buddhism.
The Samyukta-ratna-pitaka-sutra (Tsa-pao-ts'ang king ; Nanjio, 1329) is an anonymous collection of 121 avadānas in ten chapters. It was translated into Chinese by the two sramagas Ki-kia-ye and Tan-iao, under the dynasty of the Northern Wei, in A. D. 472. Beal in his catalogue (85 seq.) translated the final story; he also called attention to the two ntories in which the king Tchen-t'an Ki-ni-tch's figures. Beal, however, made this name into Chandan Kanika, without recognising the title or the person, and consequently he did not extract the information to be found in the story (The date of Nagarjuna Bodhisattva, I. A., XV. 353, 856). The Chinese translators are no doubt responsible for the difficulties of their style : but the clomsiness, roughness and confusion of the composition must be due to the Sanskrit author. Sometimes he mutilates his (447) legends : sometimes he runs into verbiage and prolixity.
The Sri Dharma-pitaka-nidāna-sūtra (? Fou-fu-ts'ang-in-iuen-king: Nanjio, 1340) is an anonymous history of the twenty-three patriarchs from Maha-Kasyapa to Sinha. As in the case of the Samyukta-ratna-pitaka, the Chinese translation is by the same Ki-kia-ye and T'an-iao, and of the same date, A. D. 472. The stories from this work which are translated or given in resumé further on, form a biography of Asvaghosha. The greater part has been reproduced, hardly altered, and most often simply copied, in the Fo-tsou-t'oung-ki (Nanjio, 1661) or Buddhist history composed by Tche-p'an in the 13th century (biography of Ašvagbösha in Chapter V.). Tche-p'an's text confirms the text of the Fou-fa-ts'ang-in-iren, bat does not elucidate it.
The traditional details set forth by the storytellers are briefly as follows: - The Dēvaputra king Kanishka, a Kushaņa by race, reigned over the Yue-tchi, seven hundred years After the Nirvana; he had two eminent ministers, Dēvadharma and Mathara. The bodhisattva Ašvaghöshe was his spiritual counsellor; the famous physician Charaka attended him. He was
zealvas Buddhist, but on one occasion he mistook & Jain stūpa for a Buddhist one: (448] he rode to Kashmir to venerate the arhat K'i-ye-to (perhaps Tcheu-ye-to), also named Dharmamitra, who had expelled the Nägarāja Alina from that country. He was master of the South, and when the king of the Parthians wished to close the West to him, Kanishka triumphed over lim. The king of Pataliputra was the suzerain of Eastern India, bat, vanquished by the Yne-tchi, he had to buy peace with nine hundred thousand pieces of gold : to pay off this heavy ransom he gave his conqueror the Buddha's bowl, Ašvaghosha, and a miraculous cock. Only the north was still unsubdued : Kanishka organised a great expedition, and got as far as the passes of Ts'oung-ling; but he let out his projects of conquest too soon, and his people, tired of always waging war, smothered him, when he was lying ill. To stop his sufferings in
In a footnote M. Lévi remarks that Beal's translations should be accepted with much reserve, especially us to his rostitutions of Sanskrit words. Thas he turns wei-che into Vyāsa, instead of Vai fohika, jou-to (trou) into Jushisha, instaad. of Jiāla-putra, and Fou-kiola (wsi) into Bactra, instead of Pushkalavati. M. Lévi intended in another article to publish several stories from the Stträlarnkārs, and to point out the corrections to be made in Beal. - M Léri Dow inforins us that one of his pupils has prepared a complete translation of the Sutralamkāra, which is finished and will be published boxt year.
