35.
to show that the Kavya literature was eminently flourishing during the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era.
. The earliest poem next to that of Valmiki that has survived the wreck of time is the Buddha-Charita of Asva-ghosha. He was a brahmin of Eastern India, who after his conversion by Vasumitra, the President, of the Buddhistic council, settled in Kashmir and became the twelfth Buddhist patriarch.* He was a contemporary of Kanishka and sa belongs to the first century A. D. His Buddha-charita is a Maha Kavya celebrating the legend of Buddha. It was translated into Chinese about A. D.,. 414—421. He is also the reputed author of Alankaraleka Sdstra. His style is very simple andv graceful and seems immediately descended from the language of Valmiki and the mischievous artificialities of later works are not at all noticeable. There is so much of similarity between his fancies and Kalidasa's that many scholars are of opinion that one of these must have copied from the other.
, Here .comes the Dark Age in the history of Kavya poetry. For centuries more than three, no work of the kind survived to us, so that this datum became the foundation of the famous Renaissance Theory of Max Muller—that in consequence of the' Scythian incursions the Indians ceased from literary activity for some centuries and that the age of King Vikramaditya of Ujjain about;the middle of the 6th century. ^?as the golden age of Sanskrit poetry. The merits of the theory itself as based on FergussonTs hypothesis will be discussed in a later chapter. But epigraphical research in recent years has brought to light a ;ti&ss,.of literary work, which
*' His s'ermons were so impressive that horses shed tears and would notf eat fodder before him. Hence his name. .,.......... accurately 18 different works *£