Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism

Sūtrālaṅkāra – 148
model and a pattern, which the better known Kālidāsa was not loth
to imitate.
From Sylvain Lévi in Journal Asiatique. July-August, 1908. [178]
The outraged Pandit
Only twenty years ago Aśvaghoṣa figured as no more than a memory
in the history of Sanskrit literature. The progress of our studies has
suddenly brought him to the front in the premier rank among the
masters of Hindu style and thought. Hodgson, who discovered in
Nepal the remnants of a Sanskrit Buddhist literature, was acquainted
since 1829 with the work of Aśvaghoṣa called the Vajrasūcī or the
Diamond Needle. He prepared an English translation of it with the
help of an educated Indian, which he published in 1831. It appeared
in the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society under the title of
Disputation respecting Caste, by a Buddhist. Hodgson had vainly
searched for information on the age and the country of the author.
All that people knew about him in Nepal was that he was a
Mahāpandit and that he wrote, besides this little tract, two Buddhist
works of greater compass, the Buddhacarita Kāvya and the Nandi-
Mukhasughoṣa Avadāna, both highly reputed, and other works. In
1839, Lancelot Wilkinson, the British Agent at Bhopal, printed the
Sanskrit text of the Vajrasūcī enriched at the same time with an
amusing addition. It was called the Wujra Soochi or Refutation of
the Argument upon which the Brahmanic institution of caste is
founded by the learned Boodhist! Ashwa Ghosha; also the Tunku, by
Soobaji Bapoo, being a reply to the Wujra Soochi, in 1839. Indignant
at the attacks by Aśvaghoṣa against the system of castes, the
Brahman Soobaji Bapoo in the service of Wilkinson could not bring