Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
In Aśvaghosha we find the story of a Brahman who casually taking up a book to pass the time lights on a copy of the Sutra of the Twelve Causes and is converted.
Since the early history of the Mahayana is a matter for argument rather than precise statement, it will perhaps be best to begin with some account of its doctrines and literature and proceed afterwards to chronology. I may, however, mention that general tradition connects it with King Kanishka and asserts that the great doctors Aśvaghosha and Nâgârjuna lived in and immediately after his reign.
After Aśvaghosha comes Nâgârjuna who may have flourished any time between 125 and 200 A.D. A legend which makes him live for 300 years is not without significance, for he represents a movement and a school as much as a personality and if he taught in the second century A.D. he cannot have been the founder of Mahayanism.
The foundation of our knowledge of Sâkya Buddha is from a Life of him by Asvaghosha, in the first century of our era; and this life is again founded on a legendary history, not framed after any Indian model, but worked out among the nations in the north of India. The Life of Buddha by Asvaghosha is a poetical romance of nearly ten thousand lines.
The work called Awakening of Faith and ascribed to Aśvaghosha is not extant in Sanskrit but was translated into Chinese in 553 A.D. Its doctrine is practically that of the Yogâcâra school and this makes the ascription doubtful, but it is a most important treatise.
Nâgârjuna's authorship is not beyond dispute but these ideas may well represent a type of popular Buddhism slightly posterior to Aśvaghosha. In most lists of patriarchs Nâgârjuna is followed by Deva, also called Âryadeva, Kâṇadeva or Nîlanetra. I-Ching mentions him among the older teachers and a commentary on his principal work, the Śataśâstra, is attributed to Vasubandhu.
Our estimate of his position in the history of Buddhism must depend on our opinion as to the authorship of The Awakening of Faith. If this treatise was composed by Aśvaghosha then doctrines respecting the three bodies of Buddha, the Tathâgatagarbha and the Âlaya-vijñâna were not only known but scientifically formulated considerably before Asanga.
Asanga was the founder of the later and more scholastic system called Yogâcâra and is also associated with a series of revelations said to have been made by Maitreya. As mentioned above, tradition makes Aśvaghosha, one of the most brilliant among Sanskrit writers, live at the court of Kanishka and according to some accounts he was given to the Kushans as part of a war indemnity.
Then they all kneel down and one of them who sings well begins to chant hymns describing the virtues of the great Teacher and continues to sing ten or twenty ślokas. Among the scriptures for such an occasion the 'Service in three parts' is often used. This is a selection of Aśvaghosha. The first part contains ten ślokas of a hymn.
The Mahayanist scriptures are composed in Sanskrit not in Pali, but it is only rarely for instance in the works of Aśvaghosha that Buddhist Sanskrit conforms to the rules of the classical language.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking