Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s28.11

c11.s28.11

No tangible evidence is forthcoming to enable us to estimate the measure of success that attended the missions to foreign lands; some stones bearing the obviously Buddhist symbols of the wheel and trident have been found in Egypt, but in the absence of any inscriptions on them, their age must remain uncertain, and they may have nothing to do with the missions of Aśoka. But the discovery at Memphis of some of Indian figures made in moulds about 200B.C. may be more to the point¹. The conversion of Ceylon has been treated with epic fulness in the Ceylonese chronicles; but even here the details of the story are open to doubt. Devānāmpriya Tissa was the contemporary of Aśoka in Ceylon, and the two monarchs were friends ‘though they had never seen each other’. Soon after his accession Tissa sent an embassy to Aśoka; it was led by his nephew Ariṭṭha and carried valuable presents to Aśoka; the mission took a week for the journey by sea from Jambukola to Tāmralipti and another week from there to reach Pāṭaliputra. It was received with great honours, spent five weeks in the Mauryan capital, and then returned to Ceylon bringing as a return present ‘all that was needful for consecrating a king’ and the gift of the true doctrine in the form of a message telling Tissa that Aśoka had become a lay disciple in the religion of the Buddha and exhorting him to do likewise. Tissa consecrated himself a second time thereafter; Mahinda came one month later, says the *Dīpavaṃsa*. Some time later Ariṭṭha was despatched once more to Pāṭaliputra to fetch Saṅghamittā for the ordination of Queen Anulā and her companions, and a branch of the Bodhi-tree for being planted in Ceylon¹. Some modern writers are inclined to discredit the whole account, but there is nothing intrinsically improbable here, and Aśoka's reference to Tambapaṇṇi twice in his inscriptions shows that once more the chronicles are only embellishing historical occurrences.