to have been the limit of his dominions but
tradition ascribes to this period the joint colonization of Khotan
from India and China.

Sinhalese and Burmese traditions also credit him with the despatch of
missionaries who converted Suvarnabhumi or Pegu. No mention of this
has been found in his own inscriptions, and European critics have
treated it with not unnatural scepticism for there is little
indication that Asoka paid much attention to the eastern frontiers of
his Empire. Still I think the question should be regarded as being
_sub judice_ rather than as answered in the negative.

Indian expeditions to the East probably commenced, if not in the reign
of Asoka, at least before our era. The Chinese Annals[4] state that
Indian Embassies reached China by sea about 50 B.C. and the Questions
of Milinda allude to trade by this route: the Ramayana mentions Java
and an inscription seems to testify that a Hindu king was reigning in
Champa (Annam) about 150 A.D. These dates are not so precise as one
could wish, but if there was a Hindu kingdom in that distant region in
the second century it was probably preceded by settlements in nearer
halting places, such as the Isthmus of Kra[5] or Java, at a
considerably anterior date, although the inscriptions discovered there
are not earlier than the fifth century A.D.

Java seems to have left some trace in Indian tradition, for instance
the proverb that those who go to Java do not come back, and it may
have been an early distributing centre for men and merchandize in
those seas. But Ligor probably marks a still earlier halting place. It
is on the same coast as the Mon kingdom of Thaton, which had
connection with Conjevaram by sea and was a centre of Pali Buddhism.
At any rate there was a movement of conquest and colonization in these
regions which brought with it Hinduism and Mahayanism, and established
Hindu kingdoms in Java, Camboja, Champa and Borneo, and another
movement of Hinayanist propaganda, apparently earlier, but of
which we know less.[6] Though these expeditions both secular and
religious probably took ship on the east coast of India, _e.g._ at
Masulipatam or the Seven Pagodas, yet their original starting point
may have been in the west, such as the district of Badami or even
Gujarat, for there were trade routes across the Indian Peninsula at an
early date.[7]

It is curious that the early history of Burma should be so obscure and
in order not to repeat details and hypo