Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism

Aśvaghoṣa and his School – 44
Buddhacarita and Kālidāsa
Quite differently poetical for instance from that of the Lalitavistara
is the picture of the young prince going out for a walk in cantos 3
and 4.
Here in a charming way is depicted how when the news arrives that
the prince had gone out the ladies of the city in their curiosity hasten
from their chambers to the roofs of the houses and to the windows,
hindered by their girdles which fall off, and rush forward with the
greatest haste pressing on and pushing each other, frightening by the
clank of their waistbands and the ring of their ornaments the birds
on the roofs. The faces of the beauties, charming as lotus, gleaming
out of the windows appear, as if the walls of the houses were really
decorated with lotus flowers. As Cowell has already noticed in the
preface to his edition the Buddhacarita, Kālidāsa has imitated this
scene from Aśvaghoṣa (Buddhacarita, iii 13/24) in his Raghuvaṁśa
(vii, 5/12). The meeting with the old man whom the gods cause to
appear before the prince is charmingly described. In his
astonishment the prince asks:
“Who is the man coming this side, oh charioteer?
With white hair, eyes sunk deep in their socket,
Bending over his staff, his limbs quavering?
Is that Nature’s course or a sport of Chance?” [33]
To this the charioteer replies:
“Old age it is that has broken him – age,
The thief of beauty and the destroyer or strength,
The source of sorrow and the end of joy,