The Buddha-Carita, or The Life of Buddha

The Buddha-Carita, or The Life of Buddha by Aevaghosa edited and translated by Edward B. Cowell is the original biography of the Buddha. The text is translated directly from sanskrift scriptures written in the fifth century.

From the translators foreword: The Buddha-carita was translated into Chinese by Dharmarakùa in the fifth century, and a translation of this was published by the Rev. S. Beal in the present series [of the Sacred Books of the East]; it was also translated into Tibetan in the seventh or eighth century. The Tibetan as well as the Chinese version consists of twenty-eighth chapters, and carries down the life of Buddha to his entrance into Nirvana and the subsequent division of the sacred relics. The Tibetan version appears to be much closer to the original Sanskrit than the Chinese; in fact from its verbal accuracy we can often reproduce the exact words of the original, since certain Sanskrit words are always represented by the same Tibetan equivalents, as for instance, the prepositions prefixed to verbal roots.