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LIFE OF BUDDHA
BY ASVAGHOSHA BODHISATTVA
Translated from Sanscrit into Chinese by Dharmaraksha,
A.D. 420; from Chinese into English by Samuel Beal
INTRODUCTION
Buddha is undoubtedly the most potent name as a religious teacher, in
the whole of Asia. The propaganda of the Buddhistic faith passed from
the valley of the Indus to the valley of the Ganges, and from Ceylon to
the Himalayas; thence it traversed China, and its conquests seem to have
been permanent. The religion of Buddha is so far different from that of
Confucius, and so far resembles Christianity, that it combines mysticism
with asceticism--a practical rule of personal conduct with a consistent
transcendentalism. It has, moreover, the great advantage of possessing a
highly fascinating and romantic gospel, or biography, of its founder.
Gautama, as the hero of Arnold's "Light of Asia," is very well known to
English readers, and, although Sir Edwin Arnold is not by any means a
poet of the first order, he has done a great deal to familiarize the
Anglo-Saxon mind with Oriental life and thought. A far more faithful
life of Buddha is that written some time in the first century of our era
by the twelfth Buddhist patriarch Asvaghosha. This learned ecclesiastic
appears to have travelled about through different districts of India,
patiently collecting the stories and traditions which related to the
life of his master.
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