Both of Aśvaghoṣa’s poetical works conclude with somewhat apologetic statements regarding his use of kāvya to deliver the Buddha’s words. Previous studies of his work have often read these statements as empty rhetoric, designed to assuage the typically suspicious attitude of the Buddhist canon toward kāvya, which consists in language beatified through ornamentation for the sole purpose of pleasure. This paper suggests that we should take Aśvaghoṣa’s statements seriously, and that indeed his poetry can be understood as conducive for liberation. (...) Focusing on the Buddhacarita, the paper provides a close reading of a selection of passages from the work, and draws from literary analysis to examine the way in which Aśvaghoṣa uses the narrative voice to provide a multi-perspectival account of experience. What defines these opposing perspectives for Aśvaghoṣa, it is argued, is primarily the way in which they stand in relation to the world of poetry and to the aesthetic values of kāvya, and in this respect Aśvaghoṣa should be understood as offering a highly reflexive account of his own choice of medium. (shrink)

The question I pose in this paper is simple but crucial: Why did Aśvaghoṣa present Brahmanism as the backdrop for the emergence of Buddhism? In both his epic poems, he presents Brahmanism as the obvious and natural condition of society and kings, in the same way that it is depicted in the Brahmanical writings themselves. It has become increasingly clear that Brahmanical texts present ideologically motivated programs for social engineering rather than accurate descriptions of social reality. If social reality did (...) not obligate Aśvaghoṣa to adopt this posture, then why did Aśvaghoṣa buy into this ideological position of Brahmanism? Why did he not describe the social reality underlying Buddhism in a way similar to Aśoka? While attempting to explore these questions, I will analyze Aśvaghoṣa’s arguments against some central theological positions of Brahmanism: First, there is the theological argument that a person must turn to asceticism only after he has raised a family and performed his other religious obligations spelt out in the trivarga and the āśrama system. Second, there is the issue of kāma, both within the trivarga and within the common conception of a householder’s life. The paper will attempt to analyze the way Aśvaghoṣa in his two epic poems deals with these two areas, one more strictly theological and the other dealing with themes of sex, eroticism, and conjugal love, all of which present obstacles to the Buddhist path of liberation that runs through the celibate monastery. (shrink)

This essay asks what the terms mokṣa and dharma mean in the anomalous and apparently Mahābhārata-coined compound mokṣadharma, which provides the title for the Śāntiparvan’s third and most philosophical anthology; and it further asks what that title itself means. Its route to answering those questions is to look at the last four units of the Mokṣadharmaparvan and their three topics—the story of Śuka, the Nārāyaṇīya, and a gleaner’s subtale—as marking an “artful curvature” that shapes the outcome of King Yudhiṣṭhira’s philosophical (...) inquiries of Bhīṣma into a ”return” to this world to take up the topic of the fourth anthology, a King’s generous giving, in the Anuśāsanaparvan’sDānadharmaparvan. Usages of the term mokṣa in the narratives in these units are considered in the light of The Laws of Manu’s usage of mokṣa to define the “renunciatory asceticism of a wandering mendicant” after the fulfillment of one’s debts. Usages of mokṣadharma are discussed in conjunction with its overlapping term nivṛittidharma. With the term dharma itself, it is a matter of finding the best contextual translation. A pitch is made that these four units, and particularly the Nārāyaṇīya, should no longer be thought of as “late” additions. (shrink)

Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita contains two sharply argumented critiques of the non-Buddhists’ self: one against Arāḍa Kālāma’s (proto-)Sāṅkhya version of the ātman in Canto 12, and one of a more general import in Canto 16. Close scrutiny of the latter?s narrative environment reveals Aśvaghoṣa’s indebtedness, in both contents and wording, to either a Mahāsāṅghika(/Lokottaravādin) or—much more plausibly—a (Mūla)sarvāstivāda account of the events that saw the Buddha preach selflessness to King Bimbasāra and his Magadhan subjects. Besides hinting at this genetic relationship, the present (...) essay aims at exhibiting the structure and contents of Aśvaghoṣa’s arguments against the self, some of which can pride themselves of a long posterity in the controversy over the self. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reconcile two apparently opposed ways of thinking about the imagination and its relationship to literature, one which casts it as essentially concerned with fiction-making and the other with culture-making. The literary imagination’s power to create fictions is what gives it its most obvious claim to “autonomy”, as Kant would have it: its freedom to venture out in often wild and spectacular excess of reality. The argument of this paper is that we can locate the literary imagination’s (...) complementary power of cultural articulation in this fictional activity. The suggestion is that we should conceive of the literary imagination as expressing its interests in culture not mimetically but by producing a certain kind of meaning. This meaning is irreducibly narratological, and understanding it helps us to see the role of narrative in bringing into harmony the literary imagination’s interests in both the imaginary and the real. (shrink)