Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism

Aśvaghoṣa and his School – 53
Tathāgatagarbha and the Tathatā which occurs in Laṅkāvatāra.
Professor Takakusu, who holds the authorship of the poet Aśvaghoṣa
as altogether out of question, says that the older catalogue of the
Chinese texts does not contain the name of Aśvaghoṣa as the author.
In the Tibetan Tanjur Aśvaghoṣa is also described as the composer of
the Śatapañcāśatikastotra, the panegyric in 150 verses, which
according to I-
-tsing
cannot
all events belongs to the same school as Aśvaghoṣa and is
accordingly confused with him.
name of Aśvaghoṣa, (F.W., Thomas Orientalistenkongresse XIII,
Indian Antiquities, 1903, p. 345 ff. and S. C. Vidyabhushana Journal
of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1910, p. 477 ff.) “It is entrancing,”
says I-tsing, “in the congregation of the monks to hear recited the
hymn in 150 verses or the hymn in 400 verses. These fascinating
poems are like heavenly flowers in their [41] beauty and the exalted
principles which they contain emulate in dignity the height of
mountain summits. Therefore all the composers of hymns in India
imitate his style regarding him as the father of literature. Even men
like the Bodhisattva Asaṅga and Vasubandhu greatly admire him.
Throughout India every monk, as soon as he is able to recite the five