Buddhacarita by Ven Asvaghosa - Ancient Buddhist Texts

Buddha-carita, or Life of Buddha - 6
copy of this portion of the original; but after that his account is quite
independent, and has no relation to the two versions.
In my preface to the edition of the Sanskrit text I have tried to show
that Aśvaghoṣa’s poem appears to have exercised an important
influence on the succeeding poets of the classical period in India.
When we compare the descriptions in the seventh book of the
Raghuvaṁsa of the ladies of the city crowding to see prince Aja as he
passes by from the Svayaṁvara where the princess Bhojyā has chosen
him as her husband, with the episode in the third book of the Buddhacarita
(ślokas 13-24); or the description’s of Kāma’s assault on Śiva in
the Kumārasambhava with that of Māra’s temptation of Buddha in the
thirteenth book, we can hardly fail to trace some connection. There is
a similar resemblance between the description in the fifth book of the
Rāmāyaṇa, where the monkey Hanumat enters Rāvaṇa’s palace by
night, and sees his wives asleep in the seraglio and their various
unconscious attitudes, and in the description in the fifth book of the
present poem where Buddha on the night of his leaving his home for
ever sees the same unconscious sight in his own palace. Nor may we
forget that in the Rāmāyaṇa the description is introduced as an
ornamental episode; in the Buddhist poem it an essential elelment in
the story, as it supplies the final impulse which stirs the Bodhisattva
to make his escape from the world. These different descriptions
became afterwards commonplaces in Sanskrit poetry, like the
catalogue of the ships in Greek or Roman epics; but they may very
well have originated in connection with definite incidents in the
Buddhist sacred legend.