Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism

Sūtrālaṅkāra – 167
The unidentified kingdom of Siu-ho-to, the scene of Story 39, takes
us to the same region. It was there that, according to the narrative of
the traveller Fa-hien, King Śibi purchased a dove at the price of his
own flesh. The touching occurrence is recounted at length in the 64th
Story and we know by the researches of Sir Aurel Stein that this is
the country which corresponds to the modern Bunner. A [196]
further addition to our knowledge of ancient geography is furnished
by Story 45. The Chinese Han is undoubtedly the Sanskrit China
which takes us to the north of the Himālayas, the tracts subject to
Chinese influences. Similarly the Ta-tsin of Story 90 continues the
geographical horizon of ancient India towards Hellenic Asia, Ta-tsin
being the translation of the Sanskrit Yavana of the Indians. If
Aśvaghoṣa was a native of Central India there is no doubt that at the
time when he composed his Sūtralaṅkāra he was living on the
confines of North Western India.
The personæ of the Story Book
The personages of the Sūtralaṅkāra are most frequently anonymous.
They are Brahmans, ascetics, monks, merchants, painters, jewellers,
washerman, iron-smiths and so on, giving a clue to the inner life of
the great Indian public, as it lived and died in those days, about
whom we hear so little in the voluminous religious books of the
Brahmans. Sometimes in our collection of sermons the Buddha and
his disciples are brought on the scene. Some of the heroes are easily
identifiable as historical personages. Aśoka, the great Maurya
emperor, is the hero of three tales. He is referred to in a fourth. His
spiritual adviser Upagupta, one of the patriarchs of Buddhism, is the
hero of another story. Both the ruler and his guide are placed
definitely a hundred years after the Buddha. Upagupta became a