‘‘Turning the Wheel of the Dharma’: A translation of Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita Canto 15 from a recently rediscovered Sanskrit manuscript
Authors
Jones, Dhivan ThomasAffiliation
University of ChesterPublication Date
2021-12-15
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This article offers a first translation into English of the re-discovered Sanskrit text of Canto 15 of Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita. While Cantos 1–14 of Aśvaghoṣa’s kāvya, or long poem on the life of the Buddha, have survived in Sanskrit, it had been thought that Cantos 15–24 only survived in Tibetan and Chinese translations. But the Japanese scholar Kazunobu Matsuda, working with Jens-Üwe Hartmann, has recently identified the whole of Canto 15 embedded in a Sanskrit manuscript of the Tridaṇḍamālā, attributed to Aśvaghoṣa. While Matsuda has made a translation into Japanese, I offer a translation of the Sanskrit text of Buddhacarita Canto 15 into English. A distinctive feature of this translation is that I present a prose translation, conveying the Sanskrit syntax and vocabulary in an accurate form, alongside a verse translation, suggesting some of the poetic qualities of Ásvaghoṣa’s Sanskrit in the form of English blank verse and unrhymed ballad metre.Citation
Jones, D. T. (2021). ‘Turning the Wheel of the Teaching’: A translation of Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita Canto 15 from a recently rediscovered Sanskrit manuscript. Asian Literature and Translation, 8(1), pp.47–62. http://doi.org/10.18573/alt.50Publisher
Cardiff University PressJournal
Asian Literature and TranslationDOI
10.18573/alt.50Additional Links
https://alt.cardiffuniversitypress.org/articles/abstract/50/https://alt.cardiffuniversitypress.org/
Type
ArticleISSN
No print ISSNEISSN
2051-5863ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.18573/alt.50
Scopus Count
Collections
The following license files are associated with this item:
- Creative Commons
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International