Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism

Avadāna – 69
our printed edition (Nepalese Buddhist Literature, pp. 304-316). Also
a Paris manuscript which is described in the Cambridge edition (p.
663 ff.) harmonizes only partially with our Divyāvadāna.
Characteristics
This collection of stories, of great importance for the history of
Indian sociology, begins with the Mahāyānistic benediction, “Oh,
reverence to all the exalted Buddhas and Bodhisattvas” and contains
a few obviously later accretions in the Mahāyānistic sense. As a
whole, however, the book decidedly belongs to the Hīnayāna school.
As the example of the Mahāyānistic interpolation we may mention
chapter XXXIV which is noted in the collection itself as a
Mahāyānasūtra (p. 483). In chapter XXX there occurs the
ṣadakṣaravidya or the well-known Tibetan formula of [54] om mani
padme hum (Poussin, Boudhisme p. 381). The Sanskrit canon of
Buddhism is repeatedly mentioned and individual canonic texts are
quoted such as Dīrghāgama, Udāna, Sthaviragāthā (Oldenberg,
Zeitschift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 52,1891, pp.
653, 655 f., 658, 665). It mentions the four Āgamas (p. 333). Many of
the stories commence and terminate exactly as in the
Avadānaśataka. And finally a number of stereotyped phrases and
descriptions, so characteristic, appear again in self-same words in the
Divyāvadāna. In all probability they are derived from the common
source – the Vinayapiṭaka of the Sarvāstivādis. As a matter of fact,
more than half of the anecdotes have been borrowed from the latter
but several have been loans from the Sūtrālaṁkāra of Aśvaghoṣa
which we discussed above (Huber Bulletin de l’Ecole Francaise
d’Extreme Orient IV, 1904, 709 ff.; VI, 1906, 1 ff.; Sylvain Lévi