58 AQVAGHOSA AND EARLY BUDDHIST KAVYA
tion from the Buddha ; he becomes not merely a saint, but on the Buddha's bidding determines on. the nobler course of seek- ing salvation not for himself alone', but of preaching it to others (xii-xviii).
The Buddhacarita J deals with the greater theme of the life of the Buddha, and it is a misfortune that as we have it the poem contains but seventeen Cantos and qf these only the first thirteen — with certain exceptions — are genuine, the remainder being an addition made a century ago by Amrtananda who records that he did so because he oould not find a manuscript of the rest of the text. The poem now ends with the conversions made at Benares, but the Chinese version, made between a.d. 414 and 421, and the Tibetan, have twenty-eight Cantos, and I-tsing still knew of this number. The exact source which influenced Acvaghosa in his choice of incident is unknown, for it is not proved that the Lalitavisiara existed in his time in anything like its present form. In any case the contrast between the two works is remarkable ; the LalttavislaraJ^wiitten in the».main in Sanskrit* prose of the plain type, intermingled with Ballads in mixed Sanskrit of the so-called Gatha style ; at best it is confused, at worst incoherent. Acvaghosa's poem is essentially the work of an artist ; in choice of incident and arrangement he seeks to produce the maximum effect, and, though he does not vary in . essentials the tradition, he renders vivid and affecting the scenes " which he describes.®The prince's fatal journeying forth from the palace which brings him into contact with the hateful spectacle ' of age, is preceded by the account of the fair women who crowdg to Watch his exit ,Gth_e poet again shows his skill in depicting the loving ruses by which the ladies of the harem seek to divert his mind from the desire to renounce the vanities of tha wiyWi . and in describing the famous scene when the prince gazing •dn them in their sleep resolves to abandon &e palace. Nor is he skilled in the Kamacastra alone ; he adduces the arguments by which the family pjiests, fortified by the precepts of political science, seeks to dereruie prince from his resolution to abandon
1 Ed. E. B. Cowell, Oxford, 1893 ; trans. SBE. 46 ; Formichi, Baii, 1912. See also Hullzsch, ZDMCJ. lxxii. 145 ff. ; Cappeller, ZII. ii, iff. ; Speyer, JRAS. 1914, pp. 105 ff. ; GavvroAski, Rocznik Oryentalistyczny , i. iff.; i-v ed. and trans. K. M, Joglekar, Bombsty, 191a. On Buddhist Sanskrit Literature cf. G. K. Nariman, Sanskrit Buddhistic (1923).
