Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism

Avadāna – 70
T’oung Pao, V.VII, 1907, 105 ff., and Speyer Avadānaśataka II,
preface p. XVI f.).
Analysis of Components
The Divyāvadāna is composed of very varied materials. It has no
principle of division, nor is it uniform with regard to language and
style. Most of the legends are written in good simple Sanskrit prose
which is only here and there interrupted by gāthās. But in some
passages we find also elaborate poetry of genuine Kāvya style with
long compounds. The editor of this collection of legends appears,
therefore, to have simply pieced together a variety of stories from
other texts. From this also follows that the several component
elements of the work are assignable to different periods of time. If
our collection, as has been alleged, was already translated into
Chinese in the third Christian century it could not have been
published in the original long before that date. At the same time we
have to bear in mind that because some of the Avadānas in the
Divyāvadāna were translated into Chinese in the third century
(Cowell Neil, p. 655,), therefore it does not necessarily follow that
the work as a whole was rendered into Chinese (Kern Manual, p. 10;
Barth, Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 889, V. 19, p. 260). Not only
there is the mention of the successors of Aśoka, the kings of the
Śuṅga dynasty down to the [55] Puśyamitra (178 B.C.) but there is
the repeated occurrence of the dinara, which brings us down to the
second century. And some period after Aśvaghoṣa must have elapsed
before a compiler could take extracts from his Sūtrālaṁkāra for his
own anthology. The Divyāvadāna, therefore, was redacted rather in
the third than in the second century. Nevertheless it is remarkable
that just one of the most interesting legends in the Divyāvadāna, the