leucus, and under whom the
Council of Vaisali took place "supported by King Nanda" as correctly
stated by Taranatha. (None of them were Sudras, and this is a pure
invention of the Brahmans.) Then there was the last of the
Chandraguptas who assumed the name of Vikrama; he commenced the new era
called the Vikramaditya or Samvat and began the new dynasty at
Pataliputra, 318 (B.C.)--according to some European "authorities;" after
him his son Bindusara or Bhadrasena--also Chandragupta, who was followed
by Dharmasoka Chandragupta. And there were two Piyadasis--the
"Sandracottus" Chandragupta and Asoka. And if controverted, the
Orientalists will have to account for this strange inconsistency. If
Asoka was the only "Piyadasi" and the builder of the monuments, and
maker of the rock-inscriptions of this name; and if his inauguration
occurred as conjectured by Professor Max Muller about 259 B.C., in other
words, if he reigned sixty or seventy years later than any of the Greek
kings named on the Piyadasian monuments, what had he to do with their
vassalage or non-vassalage, or how was he concerned with them at all?
Their dealings had been with his grandfather some seventy years
earlier--if he became a Buddhist only after ten years occupancy of the
throne. And finally, three well-known Bhadrasenas can be proved, whose
names spelt loosely and phonetically, according to each writer's dialect
and nationality, now yield a variety of names, from Bindusara,
Bimbisara, and Vindusara, down to Bhadrasena and Bhadrasara, as he is
called in the Vayu Purana. These are all synonymous. However easy, at
first sight, it may seem to be to brush out of history a real personage,
it becomes more difficult to prove the non-existence of Kalasoka by
calling him "false," while the second Asoka is termed "the real," in the
face of the evidence of the Puranas, written by the bitterest enemies of
the Buddhists, the Brahmans of the period. The Vayu and Matsya Puranas
mention both in their lists of their reigning sovereigns of the Nanda
and the Morya dynasties. And, though they connect Chandragupta with a
Sudra Nanda, they do not deny existence to Kalasoka, for the sake of
invalidating Buddhist chronology. However falsified the now extant
texts of both the Vaya and Matsya Puranas, even accepted as they at
present stand "in their true meaning," which Professor Max Muller
(notwithstanding his confidence) fails to seize, they are not "at
variance with B