518 



SCIENCES AND SOCIAL AETS. 



[PART IV. 



was achieved by usurpation and murder, their lives 

 are extolled for piety, provided they were charac- 

 terised by liberality to the church ; whilst those 

 alone are stigmatised as impious and consigned to 

 long continued torments, whose reigns are undis- 

 tinguished by acts conducive to the exaltation of the 

 national worship. 1 



The invasions which disturbed the tranquillity of the 

 throne, and the schisms which rent the unity of the 

 church, are described with painful elaboration ; but we 

 search in vain for any instructive notices of the people 

 or of their pursuits, for any details of their social con- 

 dition or illustration of their intellectual progress. 

 Although the commerce of all nations swept for 

 ages along the shores of Ceylon, and the ships of 

 China and Arabia made its ports their emporiums ; 

 the national chronicles, whose compilation was an 

 object of solicitude to successive dynasties, are silent 

 regarding such adventurous expeditions ; and utterly 

 indifferent to all that did not affect the progress of 

 Buddhism or minister to the interests of the priest- 

 hood. 2 



1 Asoka, " who put to death one 

 hundred brothers," to secure the 

 throne to himself, is described in the 

 Mahawanso, ch. v. p. 21, as a prince 

 " of piety and supernatural wisdom." 

 Even Malabar infidels, who assassi- 

 nated the Buddhist kings, are ex- 

 tolled as "righteous sovereigns" 

 (Mahawanso, ch. xxi. p. 127) ; but a 

 Buddhist king who caused a priest 

 to be put to death who was believed 

 to be guilty of a serious crime, is 

 consigned by the Rajavali to a hell 

 with a copper roof " so hot that the 

 waters of the sea are dried as they 

 roll above it." Rajavali, p. 192. 



2 It has been surmised that in the 

 intercourse which subsisted between 

 India and the western world by way 

 of Alexandria and Persia, and which 

 did not decline till the sixth or seventh 

 century, the influences of Xestorian 

 Christianity may have left their im- 



press on the genius and literature 

 of Buddhism ; and in the legends 

 of its historians one is struck by 

 the many passages that suggest a 

 similarity to events recorded in the 

 Jewish Scriptures. The coincidence 

 may also be accounted for by the 

 close proximity of a Jewish race in 

 Afghanistan (the descendants of 

 those carried away into captivity by 

 Shalmanasar) which eventually ex- 

 tended itself along the west coast of 

 India, and became the progenitors 

 of the Hebrew colony that still in- 

 habits the south of the Dekkan near 

 Cochin, and known as the "Black 

 Jews of Malabar." The influence of 

 this immigration is perceptible in the 

 sacred books, both of the Brahmans 

 and Buddhists ; the laws of Menu 

 present some striking resemblances 

 to the law of Moses, and it was pro- 

 bably from a knowledge of the con- 



