469:22 So the Maháwanśo, Bindusáro. Burmese Table, Bin-tu-sara. The Váyu has Bhadrasára, 25 years; the Bhágavata, Várisára. The Matsya names but four princes of this race, although it concurs with the others in stating the series to consist of ten. The names are also differently arranged, and one is peculiar: they are, Śatadhanwan, Vrihadratha, Śuka, and Daśaratha.

469:23 Aśoka, 36 years, Váyu; Śuka, 26, Mats.; Aśokavarddhana, Bhág.; Aśoko and Dhammaśoko, Maháwanśo. This king is the most celebrated of any in the annals of the Buddhists. In the commencement of his reign he followed the Brahmanical faith, but became a convert to that of Buddha, and a zealous encourager of it. He is said to have maintained in his palace 64,000 Buddhist priests, and to have erected 84,000 columns or topes throughout India. A great convocation of Buddhist priests was held in the eighteenth year of his reign, which was followed by missions to Ceylon and other places. According to Buddhist chronology he ascended the throne 218 years after the death of Buddha, B. C. 325. As p. 470 the grandson of Chandragupta, however, he must have been some time subsequent to this, or, agreeably to the joint duration of the reigns of Chandragupta and Bindusára, supposing the former to have commenced his reign about B. C. 315, forty-nine years later, or B. C. 266. The duration of his reign is said to have been thirty-six years, bringing it down to B. C. 230: but if we deduct these periods from the date assignable to Chandragupta, of B. C. 283, we shall place Aśoka's reign from B. C. 234 to 198. Now it is certain that a number of very curious inscriptions, on columns and rocks, by a Buddhist prince, in an ancient form of letter, and the Páli language, exist in India; and that some of them refer to Greek princes, who can be no other than members of the Seleucidan and Ptolemæan dynasties, and are probably Antiochus the Great and Ptolemy Euergetes, kings of Syria and Egypt in the latter part of the third century before Christ. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, February and March, 1838. The Indian king appears always under the appellation Piyadaśí or Priyadarśín, 'the beautiful;' and is entitled Devánam-piya, 'the beloved of the gods.' According to Buddhist authorities, the Rasawáhiní and Dípawanśo, quoted by Mr. Turnour (J. As. Soc. of Bengal, Dec. 1837, p. 1056, and Nov. 1838, p. 930), Piyadaśí or Piyadaśano is identified both by name and circumstances with Aśoka, and to him therefore the inscriptions must be attributed. Their purport agrees well enough with his character, and their wide diffusion with the traditionary report of the number of his monuments. His date is not exactly that of Antiochus the Great, but it is not very far different, and the corrections required to make it correspond are no more than the inexact manner in which both Brahmanical and Buddhist chronology is preserved may well be expected to render necessary.