The title says 'the life of the Buddha,' but this manuscript of the Buddhacarita opens with a war. Not the Buddha's war — a war of gods and demons, told with the full machinery of Sanskrit epic: maces, clubs, spears, and heroes whose names terrify the earth.
The great battle in the north
The text announces its subject with epic formality.
Salutations to Lord Ganesha. Now I shall describe in detail the great battle that took place in the north, a terrible war, extremely fierce, known to the wise, fought with great valor by the great demon, a great battle fought with knowledge-weapons, with maces, clubs, great spears, hand-to-hand combat, a very great battle fought without negligence, with various arrow-strikes.
The catalogue of weapons and the piling of epithets are the signature of Sanskrit war poetry — and here they are doing work in a Buddhist text.
The earth terrified
The terror spreads to the whole world as the demon heroes are named.
Indeed, the entire earth was terrified, all of it. The great warriors, the great heroes in battle — he who was powerful in strength and valor, his prowess was spoken of many times, there is no doubt here. His name alone was uttered, well-known as Hara-uddheti (Raiser of Hara). His name, greatly fierce, was served by enemies out of fear.
A Buddhist text in epic dress
The Buddhacarita — Aśvaghoṣa's great poem — is famous as a literary masterpiece of Buddhism. But this manuscript shows the tradition's other face: a Buddhist narrative that borrowed the full apparatus of epic war — the demons, the battles, the celestial armies — and told its story in the language its audience already loved. The Buddha's life, in this telling, shares the stage with the gods and demons of the older epics.