The great Indian teacher Ashvagosha, 12th-generation descendant of the Buddha, was the first person writing in his own name to present the Buddha's teachings in classical Sanskrit.
Here in the original Sanskrit and in English translation are Ashvagosha's tow epic poems. The first, Buddhacarita, is the story of the Buddha's life and teaching. The second, Saundarananda, is the story of the liberation of the Budha's half-brother.

These poems have been translated before, most notably by the Oxford scholar E.H. Johnson in the 1920s and 30s. This new translation aims to bring out the irony which pervades Ashvagosha's writing. At the root of all Ashvagosha's irony, the translator submits, is the irony at the root of Zen practice, and equally at the root of Alexander work: Trying to be right makes us wrong. Thus a gap opens up, in which irony is to be found - but only, truly from the inside of sitting practice itself.