Buddhacarita by Ven Asvaghosa - Ancient Buddhist Texts

Buddha-carita, or Life of Buddha - 5
hope that we may ere long have an edition and translation of the
Tibetan version, if some scholar can be found to complete Dr.
Wendzel’s unfinished labour. He had devoted much time and thought
to the work; I consulted him in several of my difficulties, and it is
from him that I derived all my information about the Tibetan
renderings. This Tibetan version promises to be of great help in
restoring the many corrupt readings which still remain in our faulty
Nepalese MSS.
Only thirteen books of the Sanskrit poem claim to be Aśvaghoṣa’s
composition; the last four books are an attempt by a modern Nepalese
author to supply the loss of the original. He tells us this honestly in
the colophon, – ‘having searched for them everywhere and not found
them, four cantos have been made by m
– the
fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth.’ He adds the date 950
of the Nepalese era, corresponding to 1830 a. d.; and we have no
difficulty in idendifying the author. Rājendralāl Mitra in his ‘Nepalese
Buddhist Literature’ men
Sanskrit treatises and one in Newārī; he was probably the father of
the old paṇḍit of the Residency at Kāṭmāṇḍu, Guṇananda, whose son
Indrānanda holds the office at present. Dr. D. Wright informs me that
the family seem to have been the recognised historians of the country,
and keepers of the MS. treasures of sundray temples. The four books
are included in this translation as an interesting literary curiosity. The
first portion of the fourteenth book agrees partly with the Tibetan and
Chinese, and Am