The Indian states and peoples need not delay us long. The mention of Cholas, Pandyas, etc., serves to show how widely spread, in India itself, was the Buddhist faith which As'oka strove to promote and reform. Nor need we linger over Ceylon. That island is said to have owed its conversion to the labours of Mahendra, the son or son-in-law of As'oka, and, whoever may have been its apostle, it has remained true to the faith which it then received, The mention of the Yonas or Yavanas (i.e. the Ionians or Greeks; we have the authority of Aristophanes that by the Oriental the name "Greek" was pronounced Iaonau, which is very near to Yavana) is a little ambiguous; for it may refer to the Greek kingdom of Bactria, which set up for itself a few years after the publication of the earlier

[paragraph continues] Rock Edicts, or it may refer to the Greek merchants trading and travelling in India, whose votive inscriptions have been found in ancient Buddhist temples in the peninsula. It is possible, though we cannot make a positive assertion on the point, that some of the nations on his borders, to whom As'oka refers, may have dwelt on the frontiers of what in later times became the Parthian kingdom.

The ruler of Syria at the time when As'oka published his Edicts was Antiochus II. (Theos), the unfortunate monarch who inherited the splendour but not the genius of his more illustrious father, Antiochus I. (Soter). He had only just come to the throne when the Edicts containing his name were published, and we must therefore, I believe, refer the allusions to the state of the Syrian Kingdom to his father's reign rather than to his own. It was to Antiochus I. that As'oka had applied for assistance as to medical herbs and trees, and whom he had consulted as to wells and fountains in streets and by roadsides, and for trees to give shade to man and beast. In Antiochus I., the Founder of Cities (the Syrian kingdom was dotted over with them), many bearing his name, and one of them, Antioch in Syria, justly famed as one of the most beautiful cities of the ancient world, As'oka's request would find a sympathetic welcome. The ideas of municipal and civil government encouraged by Antiochus Soter were just such as would commend themselves to As'oka. How far Antiochus profited by As'oka's suggestions, we cannot say, but Antiochus styled himself basileus basileun, and amongst his "subordinate kings" mentioned in the Edict on "creature comforts" were Philetaerus (B.C. 281-263) of Pergamus, Nicomedes of Bithynia, and, for a short while, Magas of Cyrene, who was availing himself of assistance from Antiochus in a revolt against Egyptian