पृष्ठम्:Sanskrit Literature.djvu/९८

66 AÇVAGHOŞA AND EARLY BUDDHIST KĀVYA danger sought refuge in his master's strength. The gem of the collection is doubtless the pathetic legend of Kunāla, son of Açoka, whose false stepmother succeeds in poisoning his father's mind against him and in having him blinded without his per- mitting himself either hate or reproach. We find, however, also a still more gruesome and to us repellent theme in the tale of Rūpavati, who severs her own breasts in order to feed a hungry mother when on the point of eating her own child; Rūpavati is extolled as a pattern of the Bodhisattva who seeks to save the whole world, and is accorded the somewhat quaint honour of being reborn as a prince, Rūpavata. The style of the book is very uneven, as a result of the diversity of its sources. Besides ordinary simple Sanskrit prose, intermingled here and there with Gathās, we find here and there passages in elaborate metres and prose with the long compounds approved by writers on poetics. Thus Avadana xxxviii is a version in elaborate style of the story of Maitrakanyaka in the form found in the Avadānaçataka. More interesting to us is the preservation, as part of the cycle of legends of Açoka (xxvi-xxix), of the dramatic episode of the conversion of the demon Māra by the virtuous Upagupta. The idea, ingenious in itself, is carried out with spirit and imagination; Māra is converted and Upagupta, who desires to see with his eyes the Buddha long since dead, asks him to appear before him in the Buddha's form. Māra obeys, and the devotee falls down in worship before the wondrous apparition of the master he loved. We can recognize here, without question, borrowing from Açvaghosa in manner, as in substance from the Sutralam- kāra; style and metre are of the classical type which his poems display. Moreover, we can trace 2 in this section of the work clear instances of knowledge of the Buddhacarita and even of the less popular Saundarananda; thus Gupta's son is described as beautiful beyond men but yet inferior to the gods (atikranto mānuṣavarṇam asamprāptaç ca divyavarṇam), and this some- what clumsy expression can hardly be derived from any source other than Açvaghoşa's elegant atītya martyan anupetya devan. 1 The original Açokāvadāna, according to Przyluski, La légende de l'empereur Açoka (1923), was composed by a monk of Mathurã about two centuries before Kanişka (between 150-100 B.C.). 2 Gawroński, Studies about the Sansk. Buddh. Lit, PP 49 ff.