Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c23.3

c23.3

The vast region beyond the western frontiers of India came within the geographical horizon of Buddhist writers as early as the *Bāveru Jātaka*, and possibly the *Sussondi Jātaka*, and its princes figure not inconspicuously in Buddhist inscriptions of the third century B.C. The records of Aśoka show that the eyes of the imperial missionary of Magadha were turned more to the West than to the East; and even the traditional account of early Buddhist proselytising efforts given in the chronicles of Ceylon,² does not omit to mention the country of the Yonas where Mahārakkhita "delivered in the midst of the people the '*Kālakārāma suttanta*,' in consequence of which a hundred and seventy thousand living beings attained to the reward of the path (of salvation) and ten thousand received the *pabbajjā*." It will perhaps be argued that the Yona country mentioned in the chronicles is to be identified with some district in the Kābul valley, and is not to be taken to refer to the realm of "Antiochos,³ the Yona king, and the kings, the neighbours of that Antiochos, namely, Ptolemy, Antigonos, Magas and Alexander," mentioned in the second and the thirteenth rock edicts of Aśoka. Rhys Davids, in fact, is inclined to regard the declaration in these edicts about the success of Aśoka's missionary propaganda in the realms of Yona princes as mere "royal rhodomontade". "It is quite likely," says he, "that the Greek kings are only thrown in by way of make-weight, as it were; and that no emissaries had been actually sent there at all."¹ Sir Flinders Petrie is, however, of opinion that in the Ptolemaic Period Buddhism and Buddhist festivals had already reached the shores of Egypt. He infers this from Indian figures found at Memphis. An epigraph from the Thebaid mentions as the dedicator "Sophon the Indian".²