Buddhist India c19.3

c19.3

When he died, about 270 B.C., he was succeeded by his son, Asoka, then the Magadha viceroy at Ujjeni, of whom the Ceylon Chronicles and other Buddhist writings, and his own inscriptions, tell us so much. The Greeks do not mention him, and the brahmin records completely ignore him until the time when, ten or twelve centuries afterwards, all danger of his influence had passed definitely away. They then go so far as to include his name among others in a list of kings. When this was done the authors of it had no access to the Buddhist writings, and could not read the inscriptions. It follows that the tradition had been carried down, all the time, in the brahmin schools, though not one word about it had been allowed to transpire.