{"collection":"Buddhism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bud/taf/taf09.htm","path":"bud/taf/taf09.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/bud/taf/taf09.htm","text":"A consensus of traditions both Tibetan and Chinese maintains that A\u00e7vaghosha was in his earlier life a most powerful adherent of Brahmanism, though we are tempted to discredit it on the ground that later Buddhist writers may have wished to exaggerate the superiority of Buddhism to all other Indian philosophical and religious doctrines, by chronicling the conversion of one of its strongest opponents to their side. Whatever the origin of the legend may be, how did his conversion take place? By whom was he converted? About these points the Tibetan and the Chinese tradition by no means agree, the one standing in a direct contradiction to the other. While the Tibetan account is full of mystery and irrationality, the Chinese is natural enough to convince us of its probable occurrence.\nAccording to T\u00e2ran\u00e2tha 1 \u00c2ryadeva, the most eminent disciple of N\u00e2g\u00e2rjuna, defeated and proselyted A\u00e7vaghosha, 2 not by his usual subtlety in dialectics, but by the superiority of his magical arts. A\u00e7vaghosha made use of every tantric formula he could command, in order to free himself from the enchantment in which he was held by his enemy, but all to no purpose whatever. Thus when he was in an utterly desperate condition, he happened to read the Buddhist S\u00fbtra which was kept in his place of confinement and in which he found his destiny prophesied by Buddha, 3 he was seized with deep regret for his former hostile attitude toward the Dharma, and immediately renouncing his t\u00eerthakism, professed the doctrine of \u00c7\u00e2kyamuni.\nThe Tibetan tradition presents some unmistakable indications of a later invention: the use of tantric formul\u00e6, the so-called prophecy of the Tath\u00e2gata, and the anachronism of \u00c2ryadeva. On the other hand, the Chinese records are worth crediting, though they are not unanimous as to how the conversion took place and who was the proselytist.\nAccording to the Life of A\u00e7vaghosha, Par\u00e7va 4 was\nthe man who converted him. They agreed at their first meeting that on the seventh day thence they should have the king, ministers, \u00e7r\u00e2manas, t\u00eerthakas and all great teachers of the Dharma gathered in the Vih\u00e2ra and have their discussion there before all those people. \"In the sixth night the sthavira entered into a sam\u00e2dhi and meditated on what he had to do [in the morning]. When the seventh day dawned, a great crowd was gathered like clouds. The Sthavira Par\u00e7va arrived first and ascended a high platform with an unusually pleasant countenance. The t\u00eerthaka [i.e., A\u00e7vaghosha] came later and took a seat opposite him. When he observed the \u00e7r\u00e2mana with a pleasant countenance and in good spirits, and when he also observed his whole attitude showing the manner of an able opponent, he thought: 'May he not be Bhikshu Chin? His mind is calm and pleasant, and besides he bears the manner of an able antagonist. We shall indeed have an excellent discussion to-day.'\n\"They then proposed the question how the defeated one should be punished. The t\u00eerthaka [A\u00e7vaghosha] said: 'The defeated one shall have his tongue cut out.' The sthavira replied: 'No, he shall become a disciple [of the winner] as the acknowledgement of defeat.' The t\u00eerthaka then replied: 'Let it be so,' and asked, 'Who will begin the discussion?' The\n[paragraph continues] Sthavira Par\u00e7va said: I am more advanced in age; I came from afar for the purpose [of challenging you]; and moreover I was here this morning earlier than you. So it will be most natural for me to speak first.' The t\u00eerthaka said: 'Let it be so. Following the subject of your argument, I shall completely baffle you.'\n\"The Sthavira Par\u00e7va then said: 'What shall we have to do, in order to keep the kingdom in perfect peace, to have the king live long, to let the people enjoy abundance and prosperity, all free from evils and catastrophes?' The t\u00eerthaka was silent, not knowing what to reply. As now according to the rule of discussion one who could not make a response is defeated, A\u00e7vaghosha was obliged to bow [before the opponent] as a disciple of his. He had his head shaved, was converted to a \u00e7r\u00e2mana, and instructed in the perfection-precepts.\n\"When he [A\u00e7vaghosha] was alone in his room, he was absorbed in gloomy, unpleasant reflexion as to why he, possessing a bright intellect and far-sighted discretion, and having his reputation widely spread all over the world, could be defeated with a single question and be made a disciple of another. Par\u00e7va well knew his mind and ordered him to come to his room where the master manifested himself in several supernatural transformations. A\u00e7vaghosha now fully recognised that his master was not a man of ordinary type, and thus feeling happy and contented, thought it his duty to become one of his disciples.\n\"The master told him: 'Your intellect is bright enough, hard to find its equal; but it wants a final touch. If you study the doctrine I have mastered, attend to my capability and insight into the Bodhi, and if you become thoroughly versed in the method of discussion and clearly understand the principle of things, there will be no one who can match you in the whole world.'\n\"The master returned to his own country [North India]; the disciple remained in Central India, making an extensive study of the S\u00fbtras, seeking a clear comprehension of the doctrine, Buddhistic as well as non-Buddhistic. His oratorical genius swept everything before him, and he was reverentially honored by the four classes of the people, including the king of [Central] India who treated him as a man of distinction.\"\nAccording to the Transmission of the Dharmapitaka (Fu fa tsang chuan), however, A\u00e7vaghosha was not converted by Par\u00e7va, but by his disciple and patriarchal successor, Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as. Though the two works, Life of A\u00e7vaghosha and the book just mentioned, differ in some other points, they are evidently two different versions of the one original legend. As the book is not as yet accessible to English readers, I here produce the whole matter translated from the Chinese version. The comparison will prove interesting.\n\"Full of a proud and arrogant spirit that speedily grew like a wild plant, he [A\u00e7vaghosha] firmly believed\nin the existence of an ego-entity and cherished the ultra-egotistic idea. Being informed that \u00c2carya called Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as, who, deep in knowledge and wide in learning, proclaimed that all things are relative [= \u00e7\u00fbnya, lit. empty], there is no \u00e2tman, no pudgala; A\u00e7vaghosha's arrogant spirit asserted itself, and presenting himself to Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as challenged him saying: \"confute all [false] opinions and doctrines in the world, as hailstones strike tender grass. If my declaration prove false and not true' I will have my own tongue cut out in acknowledgment of defeat.' Thereupon Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as as explained to him that Buddhism distinguishes two kinds of truth, that while 'Practical truth' hypothetically admits the existence of an \u00e2tman, there is nothing conditional in 'pure [or absolute] truth,' all being calm and tranquil, and that therefore we cannot prove the ego as an absolute entity.\n\"A\u00e7vaghosha would not yet surrender himself, because being over-confident of his own intellectual power he considered himself to have gained the point. Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as said: 'Carefully think of yourself; tell not a lie. We will see which of us has really won.'\n\"A\u00e7vaghosha meanwhile came to think that while 'practical truth' being only conditional has no reality at all, 'pure truth' is calm and tranquil in its nature, and that therefore these two forms of truth are all unobtainable, and that if they have thus no actuality\n[paragraph continues] [or existence], how could they be refuted [as false]? So feeling now the superiority of his opponent, he tried to cut out his tongue in acknowledgement of the defeat. But Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as stopped him, saying: 'We teach a doctrine of love and compassion, and do not demand that you cut out your tongue. Have your head shaved instead and be my disciple.' A\u00e7vaghosha thus converted was made a \u00e7r\u00e2mana by Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as. 1\n\"But A\u00e7vaghosha who felt extremely ashamed of his [former] self-assumption was thinking of attempting his own life. Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as, however, attaining arhatship, entered into a sam\u00e2dhi and divined what was going on in the mind of A\u00e7vaghosha. He ordered him to go and bring some books out of the library. A\u00e7vaghosha said to the \u00c2carya: The room is perfectly dark; how can I get in there?' To this Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as answered: 'Just go in, and I shall let you have light.' Then the \u00c2carya through his supernatural power stretched far into the room his right hand whose five fingers each radiating with light illuminated everything inside of the walls. A\u00e7vaghosha thought it a mental hallucination, and knowing the fact that a hallucination as a rule disappears when one is conscious of it, he was surprised to see the\nlight glowing more and more. He tried his magical arts to extinguish it till he felt utterly exhausted, for the mysterious light suffered no change whatever. Finally coming to realise that it was the work of no other person than his teacher, his spirit was filled with remorse, and he thenceforth applied himself diligently to religious discipline and never relapsed.\" 1\nThe Record of Buddha and the Patriarchs (Fo tsou lung tsai) agrees with the Transmission of the Dharma-pitaka (Fu fa tsang chuan) in making Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as, instead of Par\u00e7va, the master of the conversion. But the former does not state how A\u00e7vaghosha was converted.\nThough so far it remains an open question who was the real master of A\u00e7vaghosha, we can be sure of this, that he had intimate spiritual communication with both Par\u00e7va and Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as. Par\u00e7va, who was an older contemporary of Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as, was probably already advanced in age when A\u00e7vaghosha came to be personally acquainted with him, and so he did not have time enough to lead the young promising disciple to a consummate understanding of the doctrine of Buddha. After the demise of this venerable old patriarch, A\u00e7vaghosha therefore had to go to Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as for a further study of his religion, till he was capable of forming his own original thoughts, which are set forth in his principal work, the Discourse of\nthe Awakening of Faith (\u00c7raddhotp\u00e2da-\u00e7astra). This assumption is justified when we notice that A\u00e7vaghosha in the Book of Great Glory pays his homage to Par\u00e7va as well as to Pu\u1e47yaya\u00e7as.\nNow by way of a supplementary note to the above, let us say a word about Wassiljew's observation, 1 which states that while H\u00eenay\u00e2nists or \u00c7r\u00e2vakas ascribe the conversion of A\u00e7vaghosha to Par\u00e7va, the Mah\u00e2y\u00e2nistic record says that \u00c2ryadeva converted him. This assertion is evidently incorrect, for the Life of A\u00e7vaghosha as well as the Transmission of the Dharmapitaka (Fu fa tsang chuan) in which the honor of his conversion is given to the successor of Par\u00e7va as aforesaid, do not certainly belong to the work of the H\u00eenay\u00e2na school. It is the Tibetan tradition only, and not the general Mah\u00e2y\u00e2nist statement, that \u00c2ryadeva converted A\u00e7vaghosha, and there is no ground at all for the assertion of Wassiljew, which practically leads us to take everything Tibetan for Mah\u00e2y\u00e2nistic and everything Chinese for H\u00eenay\u00e2nistic.\n25:1 Geschichte des Buddhismus, German translation by Schiefner, pp. 94-85.\n25:2 He is mentioned there by the name of Durdarshak\u00e2la.\n25:3 Cf. this with the accounts of M\u00e2t\u1e5bce\u1e6da-A\u00e7vaghosha told in I-tsing.\n25:4 The conversion of A\u00e7vaghosha by Par\u00e7va as here stated may be considered an addition to the proof already demonstrated for the contemporaneousness of A\u00e7vaghosha and King Kanishka; for p. 26 Par\u00e7va, according to the Tibetan as well as the Chinese authority, was a co-operator at least, if not the president, of the third Buddhist convocation promoted by the King of Kashmir.\n30:1 The reasoning is somewhat unintelligible. The passages must be defective, and although I might venture to supply the necessary words to make them more logical and intelligible to the general reader who is not acquainted with the \u00e7\u00fbnyat\u00e2 philosophy. I have not tried to do so, thinking that it is enough here if we see in what the subject of the discussion consisted.\n31:1 The Transmission of the Dharmapitaka (Fu fa tsang chuan) fas. 5.\n32:1 Buddhismus, German edition, p. 222, and also see T\u00e2ran\u00e2tha, translated by Schiefner, p. 311.","title":"The Awakening of Faith: Introduction: Conversions","type":"page"}