Ill
AgVAGHOSA AND EARLY BUDDHIST KAVYA i. Agvaghosci s Works.
THE deplorable darkness which still envelops early India renders it impossible to establish with certainty the date of Acvaghosa, famous alike as a poet and as a philosopher. Tradition unquestionably makes him a protege of the famous Kaniska, but the matter is complicated by the fact that if the Siilralamkara l is his, he tells two stories in which Kaniska's reign seems to be referred to as in the past ; this may be explained either on the theory that Kaniska died before him, which does not accord with tradition, or on the view that the stories are interpolated in whole or as regards the name, or that there was an earlier Kaniska ; again an inscription 2 held to belong to the time of Kaniska mentions an Acvaghosaraja who has been temerariously identified with the poet. Assuming the validity of the tradition despite these difficulties, the date of Acvaghosa would fall to be determined by that of Kaniska, for whom c. A.D. ioo 3 still seems a just estimate. Tradition also tells that he was originally a Brahmin, that he first adhered to the Sar- vastivada school of Buddhism, but was attracted by the doctrine of the saving grace of faith in the Buddha, and became one of the forerunners of the Mahayana school. I-tsing, who travelled in India in A.D. 671-95, refers to him as one of the great teachers of the past, and asserts that a collection of his works was still studied in his time. From the colophons of his own works we learn that his mother was named Suvarnaksl and that his home was Saketa, while he is given the style of Acarya and Bhadanta.
I Nos. 14 and 31 (Huber's trans., Paris, 1908). Cf. Levi, JA. 1896, ii. 444 ff. ; Kimura, IHQ. i. 417. Kumaralata (c. 150) is more probable.
II EI. viii. 171; S. Ch. Vidyabhusana (POCP. 1919, I. xxxiiiff.) puts Kaniska, patron of Acvaghosa, about A. D. 320.
3 Cf. Smith, EHI. pp. 272 ff. ; Foucher, VArt Grtco-Bouddhiquc, ii. 484 ff., 506 ff., who finds in the (Jaka epoch merely the beginning of the fifth century of the Maurya epoch, placing Kaniska c. A. p. 81. Cf. D. R. Sahm, JRAS. 1924, pp. 399 ff.
