Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/85

 III

AÇVAGHOṢA AND THE BUDDHIST DRAMA

1. The Çāriputraprakaraṇa

The discovery of fragments of manuscripts on palm-leaf, of great antiquity, at Turfan, has through the energy of Professor Lüders revealed to us the existence of at least three Buddhist dramas. Of one of these the authorship is happily certain, for the colophon of the last act has been preserved, and it records that the drama was the Çāriputraprakaraṇa of Açvaghoṣa, son of Suvarṇākṣī; it gives also the fuller title Çāradvatīputraprakaraṇa, and the number of acts as nine.

Açvaghoṣa is an author whose fame, thanks to his error in being a Buddhist long lost in India, has recently attained renewal by the discovery and publication of his Buddhacarita, a court epic in excellent style and spirit on the life of the Buddha. His Sūtrālaṁkāra is also known through the medium of a Tibetan translation, and illustrates his ability in turning the tale into an instrument for propaganda in support of the Buddhist faith. If the tradition which ascribes to him the Mahāyānaçraddhotpāda is correct, he was also the founder or expounder of a subtle system of metaphysics akin to the Vijñānavāda of the Mahāyāna school, and the Vajrasūcī seems to preserve in some measure the record of his onslaught on the caste system, which exalted the Brahmins at the expense of the Kṣatriyas, and condemned Buddhism on the score that it was unfitting that a Kṣatriya like the Buddha should give instructions to Brahmins. Certainly genuine is the Saundarananda, in the epic manner, which like all his works is devoted to the effective exposition of Buddhism in the language of polite literature, and also of the Brahmin schools. We recognize in him one who appreciated that it would never do to allow Buddhism to remain buried in a form inferior to the best that