Buddha

THE EARLY LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

THE BODHISATTVA GAUTAMA

Ashvaghosha, Buddhacharita

The birth of the Bodhisattva

The sublime enlightenment

NOTES

This is an abridgement of the first fourteen cantos of the Buddhacharita (“Buddha-performance”, “Buddha-doings”, or “The Acts of the Buddha”, on the analogy of “The Acts of the Apostles”). This is a long poem recounting the life and teaching of Gautama, the son of the Shâkya king Shuddhodana, describing his path to the enlightenment of buddhahood, his mission to the world, his founding of a monastic order (sangha), and his attainment of utlimate nirvana (parinirvâna).

This biographical poem has twenty-eight parts:

Cantos 1-14 relate the birth and youth of the Buddha-to-be (bodhisattva), and are preserved in the original Sanskrit, and also Chinese and Tibetan translations;

Cantos 15-28 cover the mission and death of the Buddha, and the Sanskrit original has not survived, so we have to rely on the Tibetan version, with the assistance of the Chinese translation.

The poet’s name was Ashvaghosha, and he lived around the beginning of the current era (1st century C.E., apparently). His home-city was Sâketa in eastern India (see the end of the poem).

In preparing my version I have relied heavily on the translation of E.H. Johnston (1-14 was first published, with Sanskrit text, in Lahore in 1936, and 15-28 in 1937 in the Danish journal Acta Orientalia, 15) as reissued by Motilal Banarsidass:

E.H. Johnston, Asvaghosha’s Buddhacarita or Acts of the Buddha; in three parts (Delhi 1984).

A prose translation of the work, heavily abridged, can be found in E. Conze, Buddhist Scriptures (1959) 34-66.

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