ters. The Avadanas ́atakastories are brief and formu-
laic, those of the Karmas ́atakaless so, and those of the
Divyavadanathe most complex and diverse. The sixth-
to eighth-century Pali commentaries (atthakatha) and
several collections preserved only in Chinese contain
many avadanaand avadana-type stories.
Just as Hindu poets retold stories of heroes from the
epics and Puranas, Buddhist poets retold the lives of
their own heroes. The second-century Kumaralata, in
his Kalpanamanditika Drstantapan ̇kti(A Collection
of Parables Ornamented by the Imagination), first
adapted the prose-and-verse format to the demands
of belles lettres. His successors from the fourth to the
eighth centuries, ARYAS ́URA, Haribhatta, and Gopa-
datta, composed ornate poetry (kavya) in the form
of bodhisattvavadanamalas (garlands of avadanas
concerning the Buddha’s previous births). Similarly,
the eleventh-century Hindu poet Ksemendra drew
on the MULASARVASTIVADAVINAYAto compose the
Bodhisattvavadana-kalpalata,which became impor-
tant in Nepal and Tibet.
The mostly unpublished verse avadanamalas(gar-
lands of avadanas), which constitute a later subgenre,
are anonymous works, composed in the style of Hindu
Puranas, that display MAHAYANAinfluences. Several of
these retell stories from earlier sources, some in a dis-
tinctively Nepalese idiom.
As scholars increasingly recognize narrative as a
mode of knowing distinct from, but in no way inferior
to, philosophical discourse, they can look forward to
learning much from a literary genre that has played an
essential role in Buddhist self-understanding for more
than two thousand years.
See also:Sanskrit, Buddhist Literature in
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