It would seem from a consideration of the title of the seventeenth chapter, "Leaving the palace for a religious life", that originally the story of the "Abhinishkra mana" was simply that of Buddha's flight from his palace to become an ascetic. Afterwards, the same title was applied to the complete legend (as in the present work), which includes his previous and subsequent history.
A very valuable date, later than which we cannot place the origin of the story, may be derived from the colophon at the end of the last chapter of the book. It is there stated that the "Abhinishkramana Sûtra" is called by the school of the Dharmaguptas Fo-pen hing-king; by the Sarvastivadas it is called Ta-chwang-yen (great magnificence, i.e., "Lalita Vistara"); by the Mahasanghikas it is called Ta-sse, i. e., Mahavastu.
We know from the "Chinese Encyclopedia", Kai yuen-shi-kiau-mu-lu, that the Fo-pen-hing was trans lated into Chinese from Sanscrit, by a priest called Chu-fa-lan, so early as the eleventh year of the reign of Wing-ping (Ming-ti), of the Han dynasty, i. e., 69 or 70 A.D. We may, therefore, safely suppose that the original work was in circulation in India for some time previous to this date.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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Art (276)
Biography (245)
Buddha (1958)
Children (75)
Deities (50)
Healing (33)
Hinduism (58)
History (534)
Language & Literature (448)
Mahayana (420)
Mythology (73)
Philosophy (425)
Sacred Sites (109)
Tantric Buddhism (94)
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