Research in old Eastern literary remains may yet come upon materials throwing new light on the beginning and first development of the movement which, in course of time, came to be called Buddhism. The only works, as yet in our possession, in which we may discern certain archaic records of this most early stage are, as we know, the first part or Mahā-vagga of the Vinaya Piṭaka and one or two portions of the five Nikāyas. As chronicles these do not give us all the light we fain would have. Those, especially of the Vinaya are a number of fragments relating to what led up to the founding of the “Order”, and to certain early stages in its progress. The narrative is always in very slight outline; much would seem either to have been forgotten, or suppressed, as not relevant to the formal registering of some Vinaya statute, and why it came to be. We get the impression that we are reading about persons and places which, for the compilers, are just names, bound up, it is clear, with an ancient and venerated tradition, but not belonging to any actual memories either in their possession or even in their own preceding generations. The places named do not seem to be places known. A few persons emerge, two in high, a few others in low relief. These are, respectively, the founder and his chief rival and adversary, then three laypatrons—two kings and a merchant—also the first layconvert, the founder's family, a few other converts, lastly a few associates who here and there appear as fellow-teachers.

Since the first printed edition of the Buddha-carita appeared over thirty years ago, so much labour has been devoted to clearing the text of corruptions that only the exploitation of fresh material would justify an addition to the accumulations on the subject. It so happened that a little time ago in accordance with the enlightened policy pursued by the Nepal Darbar the old MS. whose existence was revealed by MM. H. P. Śāstri in JASB., 1909, p. 47, was sent to Oxford to be rotographed. Some passages were so rubbed as not to be legible in the rotograph, and I accordingly took the opportunity to make a complete collation of the MS. itself before it was returned to Nepal. Finding difficulties in some of the readings, I then made a word-to-word comparison of the Tibetan translation; but while still at work on an article embodying my conclusions, I came across the first part of Dr. Fr. Weller's edition of the Tibetan text with a German translation covering cantos i–viii (Das Leben des Buddha von Aśaghoṣa. Eduard Pfeiffer, Leipzig, 1926). As this overlapped my article to some extent, I have redrafted the latter and limited it for the present to the first eight cantos. That the two did not coincide more was due to the different aims we had in view. Dr. Weller has concentrated on producing a correct Tibetan text and an accurate translation of it, dealing only incidentally with the text and meaning of the original with which alone I have been occupied.

1. Generally speaking, two conditions rule the development of Indo-Aryan consonants, when considered by themselves in contact only with vowels. If initial, they are maintained; if intervocalic, they are voiced, opened, and in many cases altogether disappear.

The Sanskrit name of this Bodhi-sattva, so prominent in the Mahāyāna church of Buddhism, has been a puzzle to several generations of scholars.

Though it seems rather simple (= past pass. part, of lok-ava, “to look [down]”— īśvara, “lord”), there are at least five or six translations, viz. “The lord of what we see (i.e. the present world),” “The lord whom we see,” “The lord revealed [contemplated],” “The master who is [was] seen,” etc.

The text contained in the MS. described below begins with three syllables śa-li-ẖbur, which scholars will naturally (unless illuded for a moment by the thought of sāli “year”) find suggestive of Śāriputra. The recurrence of the syllables will confirm this impression, more especially when far on in the document appears 'an.nog.da.la.sam. yag.sam.bu.de, previously recognized as=Sanskrit anuttara samyak-sambodhi. But, since the conjunction of this expression with the name of Śāriputra is frequently exemplified in the mass of Sanskrit Buddhist writings, we are grateful for the occurrence early in the text of the combination 'a.myi.ẖda, i.e. obviously Amitābha or Amitāyus, pointing to the Amitābha literature. When we come to try the smaller Sukhāvatīvyūka (published by Max Müller and Bunyiu Nanjio in Anecdota Oxoniensia, Aryan Series, vol. i, part ii, pp. 92–100), the distribution and character of the paragraphs soon enables us to fix upon sections ix(viii)–xx, of which several afford great assistance by furnishing names of numerals or of Buddhas in succession. As in the former case, some apparent divergencies from the Sanskrit original direct attention to the Chinese version translated into French by Messrs. Ymaizumi and Yamata in Annales du Musée Guimet, vol. ii, pp. 39–44. And this has enabled Captain Clauson to verify the whole text as a transcription, syllable for syllable, of Kumārajīva's rendering (Nanjio, No. 200). We give the Chinese characters from the India Office copy, and append a direct and inverse index of the syllables as represented in the Tibetan writing. From the interesting colophon it appears that the copy was a work of piety.