The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.276

c10.s2.276

Pushyamitra himself may have played into the hands of the Greeks, if there be anything in the story of his persecution of Buddhists. A usual view among historians of India has been that, though the story is greatly exaggerated, it must have had *some* basis in fact; and indeed several other persecutions of Buddhists in India are known.¹ But the story comes from a source which, at best, is only quasi-historical: the Asoka-Avadāna² or Acts of Asoka. An Avadāna is the story of the doings of some great man—Greeks might have said his *ἀριστεία*—and the Asoka-Avadāna stands in much the same relation to the real history of Asoka as the Alexander-Romance does to the real history of Alexander. But it is much nearer in time—it is supposed to have been written at Mathurā about 150-100 B.C.,³ which might make its author a younger contemporary of Pushyamitra; and even the late Alexander-Romance contains *some* truth. Putting together the different notices,⁴ the full story about Pushyamitra is that, as Asoka had built 84,000 stupas and he himself did not feel equal to doing so much, he resolved to rival him by destroying 84,000 stupas; he started at Pātaliputra, where the great Kukkuta-ārāma monastery was saved by a miracle, and then went on to Sāgala (represented as under his rule) where he massacred the members of the Buddhist Order, offering a gold piece for the head of each Arhat; but in the north-west he was checked, so he turned southward towards the southern ocean, where he was destroyed by supernatural agency. Naturally this is not history: there is said to be no trace of any destruction of stupas at this time, there were many Buddhists and Buddhist buildings in Pushyamitra’s own kingdom of Vidisā, and he himself had a long reign.⁵