Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.15

c8.15

∗ According to the Church history of the island which has attained a fixed canonical status in Ceylon, and which first meets us in texts of the fourth and fifth century after Christ, but which must be based on considerably older memoranda, Mahinda, the son of the great Indian king Asoka (circ. 260 B.C.), was the converter of Ceylon. The tradition is in some essential parts obviously a concoction ; how much or how little truth it contains, cannot for the present be determined with certainty.