Gardens and Parks of Ancient India and the Poetics of Aśvaghoṣa

After a brief overview on the studies conducted so far on historical Indian gardens, and some remarks on the association of the garden with Paradise in India and elsewhere, the paper focuses on famous passages of Aśvaghoṣa’s poems: the depiction of the park of Kapilavāstu in the Buddhacarita, and the visit to Indra’s heavenly garden of the Saundarananda, taking into account related sources. While in the Buddhacarita an earthly park with its courtesans/apsarases evokes an image of heaven, in the Saundarananda the poet appears, on the one side, to have given literary substance to Indra’s garden and its erotic allure, on the other to have chosen, for this garden, an imagery of ‘nature’ mirroring the paradises of Mahāyāna Buddhism.