The Nāga and the Kuru king in the Buddhacarita tradition

Record summary

Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacarita belongs to the early Sanskrit Buddhist biography tradition, where nāga imagery and other nonhuman beings appear within the Buddha’s life and cosmic significance. It is a useful comparative lead because it shows how elite Sanskrit literary works reorganized serpent and other creature traditions around a universal religious biography. The text is not a field report and does not establish an unknown species. Researchers should compare Sanskrit fragments, Chinese translations and later biographies, since transmission and reconstruction affect which creature episodes are securely attributable to Aśvaghoṣa.