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lesson, and prospered. So also the future sovereign is made to owe his success, throughout the long series of adventures, defeats, and victories, of intrigues, murders, and treasons, which led him to the throne, to the constant advice and aid of a brahmin, nicknamed Chanakya, as deformed in body as he was depraved at heart (or, perhaps, we should rather say that he was, like the gods, not so much immoral as unmoral). Justin (xv. 4), on Greek authority, tells two graceful stories of the effect upon animals of the marvellous nature of the king. Once, when, as a fugitive from his foes, he lay down overtaken, not by them, but by sleep, a mighty lion came and ministered to him by licking his exhausted frame. And again, when he had collected a band of followers, and went forth once more to the attack, a wild elephant came out of the jungle, and bent low to receive Chandragupta on his back.

It is curious that in the extant priestly literature Chandragupta is completely ignored for about ten centuries. In spite of his friendship with the brahmin Chanakya, he belonged to, and indeed had the insolence to found, the hated Moriya dynasty, to which, later on, Buddhism owed so much. But the memory of him, or at least of the popular romance attached to him, must have been kept very much alive among the peoples of India. For in the eighth century of our era, a layman, the author of a famous Sanskrit drama, the Mudrā-rākshasa, takes that romance as his plot. He gives a number of details out of which Lassen already, half a century ago, tried, with the help of other traditions, to unravel the

nucleus of historic fact.' He succeeded very well in doing so, but perhaps the most suggestive fact we may learn from the play is, that in spite of the brahmins, the memory of Chandragupta had survived, in the people's hearts, all through that long interval of priestly silence-another proof, if any were needed, that it is not very wise to trust altogether exclusively to brahmin evidence.

1 Indische Altherthumskunde, 2nd Ed., pp. 205-222.

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HANDRAGUPTA, aided very largely by the previous organisation of the great empire of Magadha, was able, once he had gained the mastery, not only to remain in possession for the long period of twenty-four years (about B.C. 322-298), but to hand on the empire, with enlarged territory, to his son, Bindusăra. Of him we know almost nothing. The Ceylon Chronicles merely say that he reigned for twenty-eight years, and the Greeks, who call him Amitrochates (that is, Amitra-ghata, foe-destroyer, no doubt an official title), only tell us that Deimachos was sent to him as ambassador by Antiokhos, and Dionysios by Ptolemy Philadelphos. A few sentences from the pen of the former are still extant.

When he died, about 270 B.C., he was succeeded by his son, Asoka, then the Magadha viceroy at Ujjeni, of whom the Ceylon Chronicles and other Buddhist writings, and his own inscriptions, tell us so much. The Greeks do not mention him, and the brahmin records completely ignore him until the time when, ten or twelve centuries afterwards, all

danger of his influence had passed definitely away. They then go so far as to include his name among others in a list of kings. When this was done the authors of it had no access to the Buddhist writings, and could not read the inscriptions. It follows that the tradition had been carried down, all the time, in the brahmin schools, though not one word about it had been allowed to transpire.

At the beginning of the researches by European scholars the Ceylon Chronicles were of most service. As I have said elsewhere:

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"When in the thirties that most gifted and original of Indian archæologists, James Prinsep, clarum et venerabile nomen, was wearing himself out in his enthusiastic efforts to decipher the coins and inscriptions of India, whilst the very alphabets and dialects were as yet uncertain, he received constant help from George Turnour of the Ceylon Civil Service. For in Ceylon there was a history, indeed several books of history; whereas in Calcutta the native records were devoid of any reliable data to help in the identification of the new names Prinsep thought he could make out. It is not too much to say that without the help of the Ceylon books the striking identification of the King Piyadassi of the inscriptions with the King Asoka of history would never have been made. Once made, it rendered subsequent steps comparatively easy; and it gave to Prinsep and his coadjutors just that encouragement, and that element of certainty, which were needed to keep their enthusiasm alive." 1

So Prinsep read the inscriptions. Building on the foundation that he laid, we can read them 1 American Lectures, p. 46.

better now. But we are not likely to forget the genial scholar whose noble life was sacrificed in the seemingly impossible task of laying those foundations. Now that we have the contemporary records in all their simplicity, and redolent of the time, the picturesque accounts, written six centuries or more afterwards, by well-meaning members of the Buddhist Order, who were thinking the while, not of historical criticism, but of religious edification, seem of poor account. It may be human to kick down the ladder by which one has just climbed up. But we need not do so, in this case, with too great violence. We may want it again. And it jars upon the reader to hear the Chronicles called the mendacious fictions of unscrupulous monks. Such expressions are inaccurate; and they show a grave want of appreciation of the points worth considering. Just as in the case of Megasthenes, or of the early English chroniclers, so also in the case of the Ceylon chroniclers it would be unreasonable to expect that sort of historical training which is of quite recent growth even in Europe. The Ceylon Chronicles would not suffer in comparison with the best of the Chronicles, even though so considerably later in date, written in England or in France. The opinion of scholars as to the attitude to be adopted towards such works is quite unanimous. The hypothesis of deliberate lying, of conscious forgery, is generally discredited. What we find in such chronicles is not, indeed, sober history, as we should now understand the term, but neither

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