The prominence and the importance of Aśvaghoṣa’s works and persona—to the understanding of the history of Sanskrit poetry, to the understanding of Indian Buddhism in a transitional stage and to its introduction to other parts of Asia—is well acknowledged in contemporary scholarship. But with few exceptions the existing scholarship on Aśvaghoṣa has tended to be highly specialized and focused, inviting further reading that builds on this in-depth research to offer an integrated treatment of the variegated aspects and contexts of his (...) works. This special issue of the Journal of Indian Philosophy is intended as a modest step toward a holistic exploration of Aśvaghoṣa works, which reads them across disciplinary as well as regional and temporal boundaries. This introduction is designed to highlight, very schematically, some points of interest and recurring concerns with respect to Aśvaghoṣa works; to point out how the set of articles address these concerns, and to suggest a particular order in which they can be profitably read. (shrink)

The present paper is the third in a series dedicated to uncovering the canonical sources of Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita and, to the extent possible, the monk-poet’s sectarian affiliation. Whereas parts I and II focused on Chapter 16’s indebtedness to (Mūla)sarvāstivāda Vinaya and/or Sūtra literature, this third part inquires into the sources of Aśvaghoṣa’s account of the Buddha’s enlightenment in Chapter 14 (whose first 31 verses have been preserved in their Sanskrit original). Detailed analysis reveals this chapter’s intimate relationship with T. 189, (...) a (Mūla)sarvāstivāda (?) biographical sūtra extant in Chinese translation only, but also with textual materials that have come to belong to Mūlasarvāstivāda literature and, as already demonstrated by Kajiyama Yūichi, with the Nagar(opam)asūtra of the Saṃyuktāgama. Among these likely sources, some provide a lively description of the five destinies, others relate to the iconographic prescriptions laid down for drawing the so-called Wheel of saṃsāra/existence, while yet others spell out the doctrine of dependent origination. The detailed comparison of these materials is followed by an admittedly speculative attempt to assess the relationship between these sources. (shrink)