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

Introduction to the Text - 5 even though there is an allowance in the Sanskrit prosodies for conjunctconsonants to sometimes fail to make position, here they always do, in fact, makeposition. 1There are twelve metres employed by Aśvaghoṣa in the text, or at least in whatremains of it, 2 there are 1010 verses in all which are listed here in descending orderaccording to the frequency of their occurrence:Upajāti = 475 lines Śloka = 297 Vaṁśastha = 124 Aupacchandasaka = 78 Puṣpitāgrā = 26 Rucirā = 3 Praharṣiṇī = 3 Mālinī = 2 Śikhariṇī = 1 Aparavaktra = 1The first four of these metres are used in extensio, and therefore occur that moreoften, the other metres are employed as a prosodic flourish to round off theChapters.We can further organise the metres according to their structure: the following areSamavutta metres, having 4 similar lines to the verse (608 verses, 60%):Upajāti = (11 syllables)Vaṁśastha = (12 syllables)Rucirā = (13 syllables)Praharṣiṇī = (13 syllables)Mālinī = (15 syllables)Śikhariṇī = (17 syllables)1 In Cowell’s edition once or twice he took readings that would have required reading adouble consonant as not making position to satisfy the metre, but in each case Johnson’sedition is to be preffered.2 In what follows it is as well to remember that out of an original 28 Chapters inBuddhacarita only 14 remain for examination.