Aśvaghoṣa

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Aśvaghoṣa
Aśvaghoṣa as a Mahayana patriarch
Aśvaghoṣa as a Mahayana patriarch
OccupationPoet, dramatist, philosopher
LanguageSanskrit
Periodc. 1st century CE
GenreSanskrit drama, epic poetry, kāvya
SubjectSarvāstivāda Buddhism
Notable worksBuddhacharita, Saundarananda, Sutralankara

Aśvaghoṣa[1] (Sanskrit: [ˌɐɕʋɐˈɡʱoːʂɐ]; c. 80 – c. 150 CE) was a Sarvāstivāda Buddhist philosopher, dramatist, poet and orator from India. He was born in Saketa in northern India which is also known as Ayodhya. [2][3] He is believed to have been the first Sanskrit dramatist, and is considered the greatest Indian poet prior to Kālidāsa. He was the most famous in a group of Buddhist court writers, whose epics rivalled the contemporary Ramayana.[4] Whereas much of Buddhist literature prior to the time of Aśvaghoṣa had been composed in Pāli and Prakrit, Aśvaghoṣa wrote in Classical Sanskrit.[5]

Life as an ascetic[]

According to the traditional biography of Aśvaghoṣa,[6][7] which was translated into Chinese by Kumārajīva, and preserved in that language, he was originally a wandering ascetic who was able to defeat all-comers in debate. He set a challenge to the Buddhist monks that if none could meet with him in debate then they should stop beating the wood-block which signalled to the people to bring offerings to them. There was no one there to meet the challenge so they stopped beating the wood-block. He is said to have been born into a Brahmin family in Ayodhya.[8]

However, in the north there was an elder bhikṣu named Pārśva at the time, who saw that if he could convert this ascetic, it would be a great asset to the propagation of the Dharma, so he travelled from northern India and had the wood-block sounded. The ascetic came to ask why it had been sounded. Though thinking the old monk would be unable to debate with him, he accepted the challenge. After seven days, the debate was held in front of the King, his Ministers, and many ascetics and brahmans. The loser agreed to become the disciple of the other.

They agreed that the elder Pārśva should speak first, and he said: "The world should be made peaceable, with a long-lived king, plentiful harvests, and joy throughout the land, with none of the myriad calamities", to which the ascetic had no response and so was bound to become Pārśva's disciple, and he was given full ordination as a bhikṣu. Although he had to consent to this, he still was not convinced of the elder's virtues until he showed him he had mastered the Bases of Spiritual Power (r̥ddhipādāḥ), at which point he gained faith. Pārśva then taught him the 5 Faculties, the 5 Powers, the 7 Factors and the 8-fold Noble Path, and he eventually mastered the teaching.

Later, the central kingdom was besieged by the Kuṣāna King's army, who demanded 300,000 gold pieces in tribute. The King could not pay so much, as he had only 100,000. The Kuṣāna King therefore asked for the Buddha's begging bowl, the converted monk, and the 100,000 gold pieces for his tribute. Although the King of the central kingdom was unhappy, the monk persuaded him it would be for the good of the propagation of the Dharma which would spread across the four continents if he went with the Kuṣāna King. He was therefore taken away.

The Kuṣāna's King's Ministers, however, were unhappy, not thinking that the bhikṣu was priced correctly at 100,000 gold pieces. The King, who knew the worth of bhiksu, ordered that seven horses be starved for six days. The King then made an assembly and had the bhikṣu preach the Dharma. Even the horses, whose favourite food was placed in front of them, were entranced by the Teaching of the monk, and listened intently. Everybody was thereby convinced of his worth. He was then granted the name Aśvaghoṣa, Horse-Cry.

He travelled throughout northern India proclaiming the Dharma and guiding all through his wisdom and understanding, and he was held in great regard by the four-fold assembly, who knew him as The Sun of Merit and Virtue.

Written works[]

He was previously believed to have been the author of the influential Buddhist text Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana, but modern scholars agree that the text was composed in China.[9][10] And it is now believed he was not from the Mahayanist period,[11] and seems to have been ordained into a subsect of the Mahasanghikas.[12] Some recent research into his kavya poems have revealed that he may have used the Yogacarabhumi as a textual reference, particularly for the Saundarananda, which opens up the possibility he was affiliated with either the Yogacara or the Sautrantika school.[13]

He wrote an epic life of the Buddha called Buddhacharita[14][15] (Acts of the Buddha) in Sanskrit. The monk I-tsing (Yijing) mentioned that in his time Buddhacarita was "...extensively read in all the five parts of India and in the countries of the South Sea (Sumātra, Jāva and the neighbouring islands). He clothed manifold notions and ideas in a few words which so delighted the heart of his reader that he never wearied of perusing the poem. Moreover, it was regarded as a virtue to read it in as much as it contained the noble doctrine in a neat compact form."[16]

It described in 28 chapters the whole Life of the Buddha from his birth until his entry into Parinirvāna. During the Muslim invasions of the 10th – 12th centuries, half of the original Sanskrit text was lost.[16] Today, the second half only exists in Chinese and Tibetan translations.

He also wrote Saundarananda, a kāvya poem with the theme of conversion of Nanda, Buddha's half-brother, so that he might reach salvation. The first half of the work describes Nanda's life, and the second half of the work describes Buddhist doctrines and ascetic practices.[17][18]

He is also thought to be the author of the Sutralankara.[19][20]


Buddhist Vajrasuchi and Hindu Vajrasuchi Upanishad[]

The relationship between the Vajrasuchi text of Buddhism and Vajrasuchi Upanishad of Hinduism has long been of interest to scholars.[21] This interest began with Brian Houghton Hodgson – a colonial official based in Nepal who was loaned a Sanskrit text titled Vajra Suchi in 1829, by a Buddhist friend of his, whose contents turned out to be similar to the Vajrasuci Upanishad. In 1835, Hodgson published a translation.[22] The first line of the Hodgson translation mentioned "Ashu Ghosa" and invoked "Manja Ghosa" as the Guru of the World. The details of the caste system, its antiquity and "shrewd and argumentative attack" by a Buddhist, in the words of Hodgson, gained wide interest among 19th-century scholars.[21] The scholarship that followed, surmised that "Ashu Ghosa" is possibly the famous Buddhist scholar Asvaghosa, who lived around the 2nd century CE.[23] It is widely known that Ashwagosh was the philosopher guide of king Kanishka. The Vajrasuci, the author Ashwagosh was contemporary of who lived around 2 second century. It is during this time the 'Vjrasuci'was compiled. It is extensive beautifully written poetry that is critical of caste and inequity imposed by vedic religion.

See also[]

  • Sanskrit drama
  • Sanskrit literature

References[]

  1. ^ Also transliterated Ashvaghosha.
  2. ^ Doctrine and Practice in Medieval Korean Buddhism: The Collected Works of Ŭich’ŏn. University of Hawaii Press. 30 November 2016. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-8248-6743-0.
  3. ^ Olivelle, Patrick; Olivelle, Suman, eds. (2005). Manu's Code of Law. Oxford University Press. p. 24. ISBN 9780195171464.
  4. ^ Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Harvard University Press, 2000, page 220.
  5. ^ Coulson, Michael (1992). Sanskrit. Lincolnwood: NTC Pub. Group. p. xviii. ISBN 978-0-8442-3825-8.
  6. ^ Li Rongxi (2002). The Life of Asvaghosa Bodhisattva; in: The Lives of Great Monks and Nuns, Berkeley CA: Numata Center for Translation and Research, pp. 9–16
  7. ^ Stuart H. Young (trans.), Biography of the Bodhisattva Aśvaghoṣa, Maming pusa zhuan 馬鳴菩薩傳, T.50.2046.183a, translated by Tripiṭaka Master Kumārajīva.
  8. ^ Damien Keown (26 August 2004). A Dictionary of Buddhism. OUP Oxford. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-19-157917-2.
  9. ^ Nattier, Jan. 'The Heart Sūtra: A Chinese Apocryphal Text?'. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Vol. 15 (2), 180–81, 1992. PDF
  10. ^ Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha by Robert E. Buswell. University of Hawaii Press: 1990. ISBN 0-8248-1253-0. pgs 1–29
  11. ^ Dan Lusthaus, "Critical Buddhism and Returning to the Sources." Pages 30–55 of Jamie Hubbard, Paul Loren Swanson, editors, Pruning the bodhi tree: the storm over critical Buddhism. University of Hawaii Press, 1997, page 33.
  12. ^ Alexander Wynne, The Origin of Buddhist Meditation. Routledge, 2007, page 26.
  13. ^ Yamabe, Nobuyoshi. 'On the School Affiliation of Aśvaghoṣa: "Sautrāntika" or "Yogācāra"?' Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Vol. 26 (2), 225-249, 2003. PDF
  14. ^ E. B. Cowell (trans): Buddhist Mahâyâna Texts, "The Buddha-karita of Asvaghosha", Sacred Books of the East, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1894. Available online
  15. ^ Willemen, Charles, transl. (2009), Buddhacarita: In Praise of Buddha's Acts, Berkeley, Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research. ISBN 978-1886439-42-9
  16. ^ Jump up to: a b J.K. Nariman: Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism, Bombay 1919. Aśvaghoṣa and his School Archived 10 January 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  17. ^ Yoshichika Honda. 'Indian Buddhism and the kāvya literature: Asvaghosa's Saundaranandakavya.' Hiroshima Daigaku Daigakuin Bungaku Kenkyuuka ronshuu, vol. 64, pp. 17–26, 2004. [1] (Japanese)
  18. ^ Johnston, E. H. (1928). Saundarananda (PDF). Lahore: University of Panjab.
  19. ^ Strong, John S. (1983). The Legend of King Asoka. Princeton University Press. p. 108. ISBN 9780691605074.
  20. ^ Nariman, J.K. (1992). Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 177. ISBN 9788120807952.
  21. ^ Jump up to: a b Winternitz 1920, pp. 254–255 (German version: pages 209–211).
  22. ^ Brian Houghton Hodgson (1835), [ Vajra Suchi by Asvaghosha], Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Transactions, Volume III, J. Murray and Parbury, Allen & Co. https://www.sacred-texts.com/journals/jras/tr03-08.htm
  23. ^ Dalal 2010, p. 35.

Bibliography[]

  • Buswell, Robert E., ed. (2004). Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Macmillan Reference USA. p. 35. ISBN 0-02-865718-7.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)

External links[]

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