The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c21.100

c21.100

The rank growth of legend which has clustered round the name of Asoka bears eloquent testimony to the commanding influence of his personality. In the Buddhist world his fame is as great as that of Charlemagne in mediaeval Europe, and the tangle of mythological legend which obscures the genuine history of Asoka may be compared in mass with that which drapes the figures of Alexander, Arthur, and Charlemagne. The Asokan legend is not all either fiction or myth, and includes some genuine historical tradition; but is no better suited to serve as the foundation of sober history than the stories of the Morte d'Arthur or Pseudo-Kallisthenes are adapted to form the bases of chronicles of the doings of the British champion or the Macedonian conqueror. This obvious canon of criticism has been forgotten by most writers upon the Maurya period, who have begun at the wrong end with the late legends, instead of at the right end with the contemporary inscriptions.