Buddhist India c19.21

c19.21

I have compared historically the various versions of one episode in these and other narratives (that of Asoka and the Buddha relics),¹ and have shown how interesting are the results to be derived from that method. To retell such an episode in one's own words may be a successful literary effort, but it would be of no historical value. It would give us merely a new version, and a version that had not been believed anywhere, at any time, in India. By the historical method, a few facts of importance may yet be gathered from amidst the poetical reveries of these later authors.