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This chapter on Aśvaghoṣa's Buddhacarita returns to the question of biography, and takes up the centrality of dharma in this text. Aśvaghoṣa, a Brahmin convert to Buddhism and a versatile poet‐scholar, tells the Buddha's life story from earlier Buddhist sources while taking cognizance of precedents from the Sanskrit epics. Most crucial in showing the uniqueness of the Buddhist dharma and of the Buddha's discovery of it is the repeated insistence that “there is no wrong time for dharma,” which provides opportunities for Prince Siddhārtha to trump Brahmanical concerns for the inherent timeliness of āśramadharma. It is argued that Aśvaghoṣa tells the episode of the Buddha‐to‐be entering Magadha during the reign of King Bimbisāra as a counter‐story to the Mahābhārata's narrative of Kṛṣṇa and two Pāṇḍavas entering Magadha to overthrow the tyrant Jarāsaṃdha, who is interpreted as a crypto‐Buddhist. Discussion then turns to Aśvaghoṣa's usage of the anomalous term mokṣadharma, which he seems to get from the Mahābhārata, raising questions about the treatments of mokṣa and mokṣadharma in the Mahābhārata, Manu, and the Buddhacarita. The chapter ends with a postscript on Aśvaghoṣa's closing tribute to Aśoka Maurya.

This chapter focuses on Aśvaghoṣa's Buddhacarita, “The Adventure of the Buddha,” which offers a dharma biography of a prince who becomes a Buddha. In making epic and other Brahmanical mythological allusions, Aśvaghoṣa brings across a realization that, no matter how illuminating heroic, sagely, and divine precedents may be as parallels, they are ultimately irrelevant to the achievement of the Buddha. Also, Aśvaghoṣa clearly rehearses many of the varied Buddhist and Brahmanical meanings of dharma likely to have been known to him. For dharma as the “quality” or “nature” of something at the end of compounds, Aśvaghoṣa offers this from the prince's rejection of the teachings attributed to his first teacher.

Chapter 2 illustrates a seismic shift in Chinese representations of post-parinirvāṇa Indian Buddhism and thus conceptions of Buddhist sainthood in a world without a Buddha. While Kumārajīva’s associates advanced a cyclical model of Indian Buddhist history, the sources examined in this chapter instead depicted Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva standing in long lines of Indian patriarchs who together upheld the Dharma after Śākyamuni. Because this Indian lineage was reportedly severed before extending to China, I argue that it served to advance a soteriology of absence akin to that of the Lotus Sūtra. Then, in a sixth-century cave site that includes a sculpted representation of the Indian lineage, this message was both perpetuated and nullified. On the one hand, this cave depicted the Indian patriarchs as long-departed exemplars of Buddhist sainthood. And on the other hand, it rendered them as immanent presences that could be engaged directly through the cave’s ritual program.

Chapter 5 examines how Aśvaghoṣa came to be represented as an Indian god of silkworms and silk production. Like Nāgārjuna, in this guise Aśvaghoṣa was localized in Chinese ritual arenas to provide a variety of tangible boons. And also like Nāgārjuna as local Indian deity, Aśvaghoṣa’s Chinese apotheosis illustrates the interdependent nature of religious genres like hagiography, Dharma genealogy, and ritual manual. Aśvaghoṣa’s ritual prescriptions as presented in manuals attributed to him, which were promoted as practicable for ritual specialists and common sericulturists alike, closely accorded with the manner in which he was portrayed in hagiographies circulated by the Chinese Buddhist clergy. As such, Aśvaghoṣa was not bifurcated along social lines in medieval China, as scholars sometimes assume; instead, Chinese sources depicted the same Aśvaghoṣa playing both roles at once, and several others besides, all of which were advertised to Chinese religious adepts across social and lay-monastic boundaries.

Chapter 6 offers a more synoptic perspective on the Indian patriarchs as both models for emulation and objects of veneration in medieval China. Here I aim to articulate the unique sorts of power and authority that Chinese Buddhists invested in the Indian patriarchs, as opposed to other Indian holy beings and in relation to competing Chinese models of sainthood and divinity. On the one hand, the Indian patriarchs served as objects of veneration in medieval China, much like other Indian figures and Chinese deities and saints. On the other hand, the patriarchs were most often represented as “Goldilocks saints” of sorts, who lived neither too close to nor too far from either the Buddha or latter-day Chinese adepts. This made the Indian patriarchs both authoritative representatives of original Indian Buddhism and proximal exemplars of Buddhist sainthood for the generations after nirvāṇa.

The conclusion provides an overview of the main conclusions drawn in this study concerning how medieval Chinese Buddhists conceived Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, and Āryadeva. It further explains the approach taken in this study – situating the Chinese hagiographies of these Indian patriarchs firmly within the context of medieval China – vis-à-vis scholarship on Indian figures that either endeavors to locate them in ancient India or trace their imagery across Asian Buddhist cultures. In this light these hagiographies illustrate how Chinese Buddhists developed models of Buddhist sanctity as means of bridging the Sino-Indian divide, demonstrating that great Buddhist saints could be created in the centuries after nirvāṇa, whether in India or China; that ancient Indian holy beings had become immanent presences in China; and that the avowedly foreign religion of Buddhism actually represented – from its ancient Indian inception and through its greatest Indian saints – the most vaunted Chinese ideals of sanctity and salvation.

The introduction lays out the scope of the book, the types of sources used, and the methodology employed. It discusses the meaning of the term “patriarch” and related categories of Buddhist sainthood found in Chinese sources. It explains the implications of the book’s title, which indicates how Chinese Buddhists simultaneously transmitted pre-existing images of the Indian patriarchs and invented them anew. The book examines hagiographic, exegetical, scriptural, ritual, and genealogical writings, as well as art historical materials, emphasizing the interdependent nature of these different genres. Hagiography was not produced or consumed in isolation from these other literary and visual arts; the Indian patriarchs’ career trajectories, doctrinal dispositions, and ritual prescriptions all developed in concert. The introduction also outlines the approach taken on the issue of religious acculturation, arguing for closer attention to local Chinese representations of ancient Indian Buddhism and treating Indianness as a repertoire element that was constantly (re)defined.

Early Buddhist kāvya contrasts the hassled life of a householder with the peaceful life of a forest hermit: the former is devoid of tranquility and therefore militates against striving for liberation from saṃsāra. Those householders, however, who lead an exemplary life can make at least the first steps on the road leading to mokṣa. Early Prakrit kāvya brings not so much the householder but the housewife into focus, beside the figure of the wealthy landowner. In Kālidāsa’s works both household life and renunciation have their appointed time and role, exemplified by the model kings of the Solar Dynasty.