Note 5 — III AÇVAGHOṢA AND THE BUDDHIST DRAMA

The first of these is specially interesting as it represents a type of which we have otherwise no earlier specimen than the Prabodhacandrodaya of Kṛṣṇamiçra. We find the allegorical figures of Buddhi, wisdom, Kīrti, fame, and Dhṛti, firmness, appearing and conversing. This is followed by the advent of the Buddha himself, adorned with the halo which he borrowed from Greek art. We do not know whether he appeared later in actual conversation with the allegorical figures, but for this mixture of the real and the ideal we have to go beyond Kṛṣṇamiçra, who represents all his characters as abstract, Viṣṇu for instance by Faith in Viṣṇu, to Kavikarṇapūra’s glorification of Caitanya in the sixteenth century, in which allegorical figures are mingled with Caitanya and his followers, though they do not actually converse together.5 It must remain uncertain whether there was a train of tradition leading from Açvaghoṣa to Kṛṣṇamiçra, or whether the latter created the type of drama afresh; the former theory is the more likely. The characters all speak Sanskrit, but the fragments are too short to give us any real information on the general trend of the play.