Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s21.1

c11.s21.1

Legend has cast a halo of glory around Asoka as around all such heroes of nations; and the legend of one age often derives its colour from the history of its predecessor. The cycle of Asokan legends has come down to us in two versions. The southern recension, found in the two Pali chronicles of Ceylon —*Dipavamsa* and *Mahāvamsa*, in its present form, dates from the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., but rests on material of much earlier origin. The northern account in the *avadānas* presents the same features with variations. Some indication of the age of the *avadānas* we get from the fact that they are illustrated in the sculptures on the gateways of Sāñchi. Both versions contain amplifications, under the influence of local conditions, of a more primitive legend that had grown up among the Buddhist communities in the neighbourhood of Pāṭaliputra. Kauśāmbi and Mathurā might have been the centres where the peculiarities of the Southern and Northern recensions were developed round about 150-50 B.C.¹. The legends were primarily meant for the religious edification of the faithful; the more valuable on that account to the historian are the historical details which they have preserved and which fit in with the data from the inscriptions. For the rest we must accept as fact whatever is not intrinsically improbable, though we have no means of deciding between contradictions in the rival versions. Was Aśoka in his youth viceroy at Ujjayinī (*Mahāvamsa*) or at Takṣaśilā (*Avadāna*)? Was Tissa Moggaliputta or Upagupta the spiritual guide of Aśoka? Both are placed by legend in the same relation to Buddha by a chain of four intervening patriarchs. Or did Aśoka, as seems not improbable, follow his own bent and the redactors of legend invent the relation between the emperor and the patriarchs each after his own fashion? To such questions no definite answers can be given.