Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 49.djvu/15

Rh — ‘having searched for them everywhere and not found them, four cantos have been made by me, Amntinanda, — the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth.’ He adds the date 950 of the Nepalese era, corresponding to 1830 A.D.; and we have no difficulty in identifying the author. Râgendralâl Mitra in his ‘Nepalese Buddhist Literature’ mentions Amritânanda as the author of two Sanskrit treatises and one in Newârî; he was probably the father of the old pandit of the Residency at Kâtmându, Gunânanda, whose son Indrânanda holds the office at present Dr. D. Wright informs me that the family seem to have been the recognised historians of the country, and keepers of the MS. treasures of sundry temples. The four books are included in this translation as an interesting literary curiosity. The first portion of the fourteenth book agrees partly with the Tibetan and Chinese, and Amritânanda may have had access to some imperfect copy of this portion of the original ; but after that his account is quite independent, and has no relation to the two versions.

In my preface to the edition of the Sanskrit text I have tried to show that Asvaghosha's poem appears to have exercised an important influence on the succeeding poets of the classical period in India. When we compare the description in the seventh book of the Raghuvamsa of the ladies of the city crowding to see prince Aga, as he passes by from the Svayamvara where the princess Bhogyâ has chosen him as her husband, with the episode in the third book of the Buddha-karita (slokas 13-24) ; or the description of Kâma's assault on Siva in the Kumârasambhava with that of Mâra's temptation of Buddha in the thirteenth book, we can hardly fail to trace some connection. There is a similar resemblance between the description in the fifth book of the Râmâyana, where the monkey Hanumat enters Râvana's palace by night, and sees his wives asleep in the seraglio and their various unconscious attitudes, and the description in the fifth book of the present poem where Buddha on the night of his leaving his home for ever sees the same unconscious sight in his own palace. Nor may