The Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha

This work is a translation of the Chinese version of the "Abhinishkramana Sutra" done into that language by Dinanakuta, a Buddhist priest from North India. It refers to Buddha’s leaving the palace for a religious life i.e. Buddha’s flight from his palace to become an ascetic. The legend also includes Buddha’s previous and subsequent history. The work is called "Romantic Legend", because, as is well known, the first romances were merely metrical histories. There can be no doubt that the present work contains as a woof (so to speak), some of the earliest verses (Gathas) in which the History of Buddha was sung, long before the work itself was penned. These verses, even in the Chinese, are frequently so confused as to defy exact analysis. These Gathas were evidently composed in different Prakrit forms (during a period of disintegration) before the more modern type of Sanskrit was fixed by the Rules of Panini, and the popular epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The interest of the book will be found to result, not from any critical studies, found herein, but from the stories which throw light on contemporaneous architectural work in India.