CHAPTER IV

THE PRE-CHRISTIAN EXPANSION OF BUDDHISM

THE great As'oka, king of Maghada, the Constantine of Indian and Ceylonese Buddhism, has no official place, as I have said, in the history of the Mahayana, which takes absolutely no notice of the Council that is said to have been held during his reign. The Council naturally concerned only those monks that lived within As'oka's extensive dominions; the Mahayana seems to have originated beyond the Indus, among people, possibly, o Indian origin, but still not subjects of any purely Indian state.

Yet As'oka is of importance in the study of the Mahayana. For, first, he enables us to correct a great error as to S'akyamuni's date, still commonly made by many of the official defenders of Buddhism in Japan. The Mahayana books place the date of S'akyamuni's birth in B.C. 1027, and his death, consequently, about B.C. 950--a chronological misstatement which vitiates all their other calculations. For if this be true, then , who lived 500 years after the Nirvana, and Nagarjuna, who lived in the sixth century after the same occurrence, must be supposed to have flourished respectively about the years B.C. 450 and 400, and the whole Mahayana system predates the Christian era by some centuries.

Fortunately As'oka is well known to us, not only from books, but also from the edicts which he has left engraved in stone in various parts of his former dominions, and the data thus furnished enable us to give both As'oka's exact year, and approximately that of S'akyamuni's entrance into Nirvana. From the materials at hand, Dr. Fleet has been able to fix the dates for the principal events between the death of Buddha and that of As'oka. We may accept them with confidence. As'oka was anointed king on the 25th of April, B.C. 264, 218 years after the death of Buddha, which consequently took place in B.C. 483--in the interval, it is well to remember, between the battles of Marathon and Salamis.

Again, As'oka's monuments give us data whereby to gauge the extent of his influence. Edict No. 2, translated by Dr. V. A. Smith, is on the subject of comforts for men and animals, and runs thus: "Everywhere in the dominions of King Priyadars'in, and likewise in the neighbouring realms, such as those of the Chola, Pandya, Sattyaputra, and Keralaputra, in Ceylon, in the dominions of the Greek king Antiochus, and in those of the other kings subordinate to that Antiochus--everywhere, on behalf of his Majesty King Priyadars'in, have two kinds of remedies been disseminated--remedies for men, and remedies for beasts. Healing herbs, medicinal for man and medicinal for beasts, wherever they were lacking, have everywhere been imported and planted. On the

roads, trees have been planted, and wells dug for the use of man and beast."