Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 49.djvu/14

x quoted from the Buddha-karita in RAyamuku/ia's commentary on the Amarakosha I, i. 1, 2, and also by Uggvaladatta in his commentary on the Utf&di-sAtras I, 156 ; and five stanzas are quoted as from Arvaghosha in Vallabhadeva's SubhAshit&vali, which bear a great resemblance to his style, though they are not found in the extant portion of this poem.

The Buddha-karita was translated into Chinese by Dharmaraksha in the fifth century, and a translation of this was published by the Rev. S. Beal in the present series; it was also translated into Tibetan in the seventh or eighth century. The Tibetan as well as the Chinese version consists of twenty-eight chapters, and carries down the life of Buddha to his entrance into Nirv4«a and the subsequent division of the sacred relics. The Tibetan version appears to be much closer to the original Sanskrit than the Chinese ; in fact from its verbal accuracy we can often reproduce the exact words of the original, since certain Sanskrit words are always represented by the same Tibetan equivalents, as for instance the prepositions prefixed to verbal roots. I may here express an earnest hope that we may still ere long have an edition and translation of the Tibetan version, if some scholar can be found to complete Dr. Wenzel's unfinished labour. He had devoted much time and thought to the work ; I consulted him in several of my difficulties, and it is from him that I derived all my information about the Tibetan renderings. This Tibetan version promises to be of great help in restoring the many corrupt readings which still remain in our faulty Nepalese MSS.

Only thirteen books of the Sanskrit poem claim to be Arvaghosha's composition; the last four books are an attempt by a modern Nepalese author to supply the loss of the original. He tells us this honestly in the colophon,