Buddhacarita: An Analysis of Mythology, Stories, and Themes

This essay provides an in-depth analysis of the Buddhacarita, an ancient Buddhist text written by Asvaghosa. It delves into the relationship between myths and stories, drawing upon the perspectives of scholars like Bruce Lincoln to define mythological elements. The essay examines the text's themes of creation, destruction, and the conflict between good and evil, highlighting the role of Gautama Buddha as a central figure. It explores how the Buddhacarita incorporates historical and heroic elements, conveying lessons about duty and offering solutions to life's challenges. The essay also discusses the target audiences of the text, including Buddhists, philosophy enthusiasts, and historians, and emphasizes the text's historical value. The essay explores the context of the time when the text was written, and how it has been used to explain the reason of the universe and offer solutions to many human issues.

Running head: BUDDHACARITA BY ASVAGHOSA
BUDDHACARITA BY ASVAGHOSA
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This paper will be outlining the connection between stories and mythology by focusing
an ancient Buddhist text namely Buddhacarita written by Asvaghosa. In order to understand
about the difference between myths and stories, this is important to understand the points of view
of the import critics and scholars. According to Bruce Lincoln in his “Toward a Redefinition of
History and Myth”, mythology is a potent for of discourse. As myths provide insights into the
things already present and which ought to be. According to the author, myths serve to justify the
execution of power against those with the less power and no power at all (Lincoln 2014).
However, it can be stated that mythology can have different forms and not contained into one
form only which makes it difficult to explain its exact definition. This taxonomy is encoded in
the mythic form, the narrative packages a specific, contingent system of discrimination in a
particularly attractive and memorable form. In detailing the difference or similarity of mythology
and story, it can be stated that a myth is a kind of story which explains the existence of the
natural phenomenon. This can be related to where thunder comes from or how the snow falls. In
most of the cases, the gods are associated with the stories leads to the growth of myths. Thus the
inclusion of supernatural actions gradually spread in the civilization and impose this
extraordinary powers to make something extraordinary. These became popular. Therefore even
when the people know the actual reason of the incidents they relish the stories in the forms of
mythology. According to Bruce Lincoln, myth is an ideology in the narrative form. In most of
the cases, the themes of myths are mainly the creation and destruction, the conflict of microcosm
and macrocosm, renewal and sacrifice.
In the Buddhist text namely Buddhacarita written by Asvaghosa, the mythological
elements have gained support from the historical and heroic elements. As mentioned before,
there must be a conflict between the good and bad, the theme of creation and destruction is also

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present in this epic. According to Buddhist mythology, Gautama Buddha is the hero and rather
god of creation which this particular book also refers. Here the presence of supernatural power
possessed by Gautama Buddha has associated this book with having mythological elements in it.
The entire book focuses upon the praise of Lord Buddha and his actions for the welfare of the
humanity. The struggle that every myth captures and the good ultimately triumphs over evil and
humanity is restored is also present in the text. The hero of this kavya or mythical poem is
Gautama Buddha has undergone several struggle in life which all have been cited in this text that
intensifies the emotions with the audience (Qiu 2019). The actions of Gautama Buddha has been
related to the idea of creation, macrocosm and sacrifice and renewal. It is the cycle of birth and
death which guides people in their lives. It has borne the tradition with it and started a new era of
religion which has explained the reason of the universe in their own away and how the religion
can solve many human issues.
Like all other myths, there is a presence of teaching to the people. Through the stories,
the myths show that the people must follow their duties and find out solution to certain issues.
Here in this text the author has captured the history of that time when this text was written. The
contemporary Political, social, natural and cultural situations are captured in a proper way in this
religious text so that the tradition can associate itself with the common people. Through this
book, the life of Gautama Buddha and his actions are detailed so that this can reach the target
audiences. First of all the target audiences are the people following the Buddhism and another
are the people preferring the philosophies of Gautama Buddha and feel attracted to follow his
path. This can serve the conversation of the religion among the people. Another set of target
audience is the historians who try to find out the history of that time. Though in many cases,
tampered with the truth in order to exaggerate the situation, the context and setting are more or

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less same. Therefore the target audience’s cam associate themselves with this particular
mythology eliminating only the story telling but gathering information of the historic value. The
actions of Gautama Buddha has been related to the idea of creation, macrocosm and sacrifice and
renewal.

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References:
Lincoln, Bruce. Discourse and the construction of society: Comparative studies of myth, ritual,
and classification. Oxford University Press, USA, 2014.
Qiu, Bing. "Two-Fold Linguistic Evidences on the Identification of Chinese Translation of
Buddhist Sutras: Taking Buddhacarita as a Case." In Workshop on Chinese Lexical Semantics,
pp. 853-858. Springer, Cham, 2019.