पृष्ठम्:Sanskrit Literature.djvu/१०५

ĀRYA ÇŪRA AND LATER POETRY 73 which we treat our own bodies as something essentially our own; we must realise that the grief of another is our own, the joy of another not alien to us. The poetic power of the author stands out brilliantly when contrasted with the uninspired verses in which his predecessors Vasubandhu and his brother Asañga, probably in the fourth century, preached their doctrines. Of the latter we have the Mahāyānasūtrālamkāra, written in correct but undistinguished Sanskrit, utterly overloaded with technicalities, and, despite its great length and the obvious efforts of the author to express himself effectively, deplorably obscure. But the poem is of literary interest as proving how fully Buddhist teachers had adopted Sanskrit as their literary medium.