The Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King (A Life of Buddha)
by Samuel Beal | 1883 | 108,941 words
This book is called “A Life of Buddha” by Asvaghosha Bodhisattva, in Chinese known as the “Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King”. It was translated from Sanskrit into Chinese by Dharmaraksha (or Dharmakshara) A.D. 420. The most reliable of the lives of Buddha known in China is that translated in the present volume, the Buddhacarita-kavya. It was no doubt written...
Lives of Buddha (9): Fo-pen-hing-king
We come now to notice a life of Buddha translated by a native Chinese priest. It is called the Fo-pen-hing-king and was translated by Pao-yun, a companion of Fa-hien in his travels in India, about A.D. 420. It is in seven chapters, and composed in varying measures or verses of 4, 5 or 7 symbols to the line. We have no means of deter-mining the name of the original work from which Pao-yun translated his book, but it evidently was not the Buddhacarita-kāvya of Aśvaghoṣa. It resembles it in no particular, except that it is in verse. The contents of this work I have already given elsewhere (Abstract of Four Lectures, p. 100); so that there is no need to allude to it here at any length.