Ashwaghosh’s Sundarananda: Transition from the Physical to the Liberation- Existing Not to Exist

Sundarananda, the Sanskrit epic on the Buddhist theme of Moksha and Nirvana, has become a trendsetter in the epic writing in Sanskrit and Nepali. Hindu born poet and philosopher, Ashwaghosh has composed this text after his deep-rooted impression on Buddhism. The epic has the narrative on how Buddha’s half brother, Nanda has undergone the severe practice for Moksha. He has adopted his family life, he has the close affiliation to the worldly things and he appears to be closely inclined to the material world. Buddha, not as a person, but as a philosophy or a practice, has provided him a pathway to the mode of liberation from the worldly life. At the beginning, Nanda is a common man, but by the end of the epic, he has got transition from the physical to the mode of unworldly realization. The whole epic describes his different steps of transition, dilemma between worldly and unworldly, confusion between love to life and love to beyond, and ultimately gives his successive transformation into the point of physically liberated life on earth. This study examines how he has made a resourceful transition from the physical love to the love beyond. Also, it raises some typical questions on the Buddhist negation of the material world, suffering and the debate on rebirth with the close observation on the relationship between body and mind, and ‘being’ and ‘non-being’. Sundarananda, not as a pure Buddhist text in this study, but as a literary creation, has adopted the lessons of Buddhism and at the same time, it has opened the discussion of existing for not to exist. The epic has provided a strong platform to interpret the text as a Buddhist quest for the non-existence through the existence.