Over forty years have passed since the late Professor E. B. Cowell brought out the edition princeps of Aśvaghosa's Buddhacarita, followed by a translation in volume XLVI of the Sacred Books of the East. Though scholars in Europe were quick to accord it a high place among Sanskrit kavya works and to appreciate the excellence of the editing, they did not fail to see that the materials from which the text was prepared were extremely faulty, and that much correction would be required to bring the poems approximately to the state in which it left its author's hands. Accordingly at the suggestion of the veteran von Bohtlingk, who himself led the way with a list of amendments, many of which undoubtedly hit the mark, a number of scholars set to work on improving the text by conjecture. The process has continued to the present time, but, though the alterations put forward were in general distinguished by knowledge and acumen, there is no such thing as a certain conjecture, and, if in the easier passages the right alternative was often found, no measure of agreement was possible in the more substantial difficulties. A new edition, talked of more than once, has however never appeared, presumably because a text, whose differences from that of Professor Cowell would be merely subjective, must necessarily be of too speculative a character to have real value. Of recent years the position has changed. Early in the century a MS., much older than those used for the first edition but covering only the same portion of the text, was acquired by the Nepal Durbar and described by MM. H. P. Sastri in JASB, 1909, 47. Since the beginning of the century the use of Tibetan translations for the correction of faulty Sanskrit originals has also come to be much better under-stood, and lately the translation of the Buddhacarita has been made accessible to students in an edition by Dr. Friedrich Weller, constant use of which has convinced me of the high standard of excellence it attains. Further the Chinese translations have now been made easier to consult for those who are not Chinese scholars by the appearance of the Taisho Issaikyo edition. And finally the publication of many Buddhist texts and of Sanskrit works, not far removed in date from Aévaghosa, not to speak of a long and important work by the poet himself, the Saundarananda, has provided us with further means for the critical examination of his language and ideas. The availability of so much fresh material makes a new edition both possible and highly desirable, but its very mass has as a consequence that much time and labour must be devoted to its collection and sifting, so that it is now more than ten years since, at the suggestion of the late Professor A. A. Macdonell, the present editor set his hand to the task. While well aware of the many respects in which my my attainments fall short of those of the ideal editor of the Buddhacarita, I have endeavoured to cover the ground, both by reading with one eye on Asvaghosa's works everything published in Sanskrit or Pali that might throw any light on obscure passages and by acquiring that smattering of Tibetan and Chinese which is requisite for comparing the translations in those languages with the Sanskrit original. The fruit of this labour I now present to Orientalists, with the earnest hope that they may find, not finality it is true, but at least a substantial advance in the restitution and interpretation of the extant fragments of a famous poem.
This edition consists of two volumes the first contains the Sanskrit text and the apparatus criticus, and the second the translation of the first fourteen cantos, filling up the lacune in the Sanskrit from the Tibetan, together with an introduction dealing with various aspects of the poet's works, with notes which discuss the many difficulties of text and translation, and with an index. The arrangement is such that with the two volumes open before him at the same point the reader can see at a glance what help I can give him. The chief authority for the text is the old MS. in the Kathmandu Library, which I call A. It was sent over to England by the Nepal Durbar in 1924 at the request of the late
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