The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c28.91

c28.91

The stories told about Kanishka's conversion and his subsequent zeal for Buddhism have so much resemblance to the Asoka legends that it is difficult to decide how far they are traditions of actual fact, and how far merely echoes of an older tradition. The Yüe-chi monarch did not record passages from his autobiography as Asoka did, and when we are informed in the pages of a pious tract that his conversion was due to remorse for the blood shed during his wars, it is impossible to check the statement.² Probably it is merely an echo of the story of Asoka, as told by himself.