The Sanskrit Text of Buddha-carita Aśvaghoṣa - buddhanet-de-index

3Introduction to the TextThe text of Buddhacarita reproduced here is essentially that edited by Edward B.Cowell, entitled:The Buddha-carita or Life of Buddha by Aśvaghoṣa,Indian poet of the early second century after Christ. Sanskrittext, edited from a Devanagari and two Nepalese manuscripts withvariant readings, a preface, notes and in index of names.which was originally published by the Oxford University Press in 1893, as Part VIIof its Anecdota Oxoniensia, Aryan Series. This was republished together with thetranslation in India by Cosmo Publications, New Delhi, in 1997.It has been partly supplemented by E. H. Johnston’s edition of the same textentitled The Buddhacarita: Or, Acts of the Buddha; which was published as No31 of the Panjab University Oriental Publications, in Calcutta in 1935.The texts in both editions is printed in Devanagari script. The text in Roman scriptpresented here has been prepared using a database entitled Aśvaghoṣa’sBuddhacarita: A machine readable transliteration, edited by Peter Schreiner, inFebruary 1990, which reproduced Johnson’s edition in pausa form, along withCowell’s variant readings.The original database has been converted to normal diacritical markings,subsequently proof-read, and the metrical markings have been added in by thepresent writer. In Cowell’s text all the nasals are written as anusvara (ṁ), and thishas been followed here, except at the end of the pādayuga, where I prefer to writelabial -m, as is normal in Sanskrit. 1The text also accompanies the translation by Cowell which appears elsewhere onthis website. 1 Here however the text differs in some small respects to the editionprinted there, because it has been my purpose to analyse the work and arrive at acorrect understanding of Aśvaghoṣa’s prosody, which can only be done aftermaking some small adjustments to Cowell’s text.1 Johnson’s edition (and Schreiner following him) interpreted anusvara as the relavant nasalfor the consonant group. But I think Cowell must have been following the writing in themanuscripts in his edition, and I have therefore continued with that here.