panions of Majjhimo. It is indeed possible to read Dadabhisára as the missionary's name; but as the name of the country, Hemavata, is placed between Gotiputra and Dardabhisara, it seems much more probable that the latter is intended for the name of the well-known country of Dardu and Abhisara.

11. The name of the other Arhats, whose relics have been found in company with those of Majjhima, Kasapa, and Gotiputra, will be found in the account of the discoveries made in the Topes at Sanchi and Sonári.*

12. The proselytizing zeal of Asoka is the more worthy of record, as it anticipated by nearly three centuries one of the most characteristic institutions of the early Christian Church. Though his notions of a Supreme Being were of a less lofty and of a more indistinct nature than those of the Christian, yet the Buddhist Prince was imbued with the same zealous wish for the propagation of his faith, and with the same good will and brotherly love towards all mankind. He was especially desirous that all men should be brought into the right way; but he was content to propagate his own faith by persuasion and by argument, and to pray for all those who differed from him in religion, with the hope that his example might perhaps induce some to labour for their own everlasting salvation.†

13. Like the great Constantine, the Indian King was doomed to learn the guilty passion of his Queen

*See Plates XX. and XXIV.

+ Eastern inscription of Delhi Pillar.

for the most promising of his sons; but, more fortunate than the Roman Emperor, Asoka was saved from the pain of condemning his own child. The Queen, Tishya Rakshitá, was enraged by the beautiful-eyed Kunála's rejection of her overtures, and meditated revenge. An opportunity soon occurred by the deputation of Kunála to Taxila to quell another revolt. Through the Queen's influence (but unknown to the King), a royal order, sealed with the King's signet, was sent to the Taxilans to put out those beautiful eyes which had excited the Queen's love for Kunála. The people hesitated, but obeyed; and the unfortunate Kunála, guided by his faithful wife, Kanchanamálá, took his dreary way to the King's court at Pátaliputra. When Asoka saw his beloved son, his anger was inflamed against the Queen, and in spite of Kunála's entreaties for mercy, she was made over to the torturers to be burned to death. Such is the legend which the Buddhists relate of their king and his favourite son; but as they add that Kunála was restored to sight on account of his piety, we may perhaps conclude that the Queen's evil intentions were not fulfilled. Asoka died in the year 222 B. C. after a long and prosperous reign of forty-one years, including the four years that elapsed between his accession and his inauguration. As he was forty-five years old when he was crowned in B. C. 259, he lived to the good old age of fourscore and two years.

Burnouf's Buddhisme Indien, pp. 409-413.

CHAPTER XI.

RISE AND FALL OF THE INDO-SCYTHIANS.

1. AFTER the death of Asoka, the wide dominions of the Maruyas were divided amongst several of his descendants. The whole of Central India, with the royal metropolis of Pátaliputra, fell to his son Sujasas, or, according to others, to Sampadi, the son of Kunála.* Kashmir was seized by Jaloka, another son of Asoka, who reverted to the Brahmanical faith; Kunála established himself in the Panjâb; and a fourth son, whom the Burmese call Rahanman, became king of Ava.† But though India was thus politically dismembered, it was strongly united in the bands of one common faith. The large monastic establishments instituted by Asoka, possessed all the learning and much of the wealth of the land. Their influence was everywhere superior to the power of the king; and the people deposed and accepted their monarchs at the bidding of the monks. The power

* Burnouf's Buddhisme Indien, p. 430.

+ Prinsep's Useful Tables.

See the Mahawanso, for several instances.

of the Mauryas was overthrown by Pushpamitra, who encountered the Greeks on the Indus during the reign of Menander. By the advice of a Brahman, whom he had chosen for his family priest, Pushpamitra persecuted the Buddhists throughout India.* At Pátaliputra on the Ganges, and at Sákala in the Panjab, the monks were massacred, and their monasteries were overturned. But Buddhism was too strongly rooted in the soil to be thrown down by the passing whirlwind of a single king's persecution; and in little more than a century later we know that it grew more flourishing than before, under the fostering care of the holy Nágárjuna and Milindu, Rája of Sákala.

2. During this period the Greek sovereigns of Bactria extended their dominions to the south of the Indian Caucasus; and as they were gradually dispossed of their Turanian territories by the Scythian Tochári, they took from the weaker Indians the whole of the Kabul valley and western districts of the Panjáb. Menander even is said to have pushed his conquests as far as the Isamus or Isan, a small stream which flows between the Jumna and Ganges. The Buddhist faith of Menander's subjects is proved by the contention of eight different cities for portions of his relics, over which Tombs (or Topes) were erected. This story is similar to that which has been already related regarding Buddha's remains, Burnouf, p. 431.

+ BAYER, Historia Regni Græcorum Bactriani, p. 77.

which were divided amongst the claimants of eight different cities. It may also serve to illustrate the extent of Menander's rule, when we remember the injunction of Buddha that his own remains were to be treated exactly in the same manner as those of a Chakravartti Raja. Menander therefore must have been a Chakravartti, or supreme monarch; whose power was sufficient to render himself entirely independent of all his neighbours. In another work* I have shown from the monogrammatic names of cities, in which his coins were minted, that Menander's rule extended over the whole of the Kabul valley, the Panjáb and Sindh, including the capital city of Minnagara on the Lower Indus. His reign lasted from about 165 to 130 B. C.

3. Menander was succeeded in his northern dominions by the Greek Princes Strato and Hippostratus; and in Sindh by the Scythian Mauas. This chief expelled the Greeks from the Panjáb, and confined their power to the modern districts of Kábul and Jelálábád. About 126 B. c. Hermæus, the last Greek Prince of India, became a mere puppet in the hands of the Scythian Kadphises (or Kadaphes) of the Khorán tribe.

4. Mauas was succeeded in the Panjáb and in Sindh by the Scythian Azas, who extended his dominions beyond Jelálábád, while the Kabulian kingdom of the Scythian Kadphizes, was subverted by the

• Monograms on the Grecian coins of Ariana and India, published in the Numismatic Chronicle of London.