20 Rajendralala Mitra — On the Early Life of Asoka. [Jan. 



as contrasted with the northern expansions and assimilations of the faith."* 

 The work itself professes to have been compiled by a disciple of the great 

 teacher who converted Asoka to the faith of Buddha, and in so far may 

 claim to be all but contemporary authority. It is probably, however, of a 

 much later origin ; but one redaction of it was translated into the Chinese 

 in the reign of the Western Tsin dynasty (circa 265-313), f and conse- 

 quently the work must be admitted to be considerably older than the date 

 of that version, audit leaves no room to doubt that at least one of the prevailing 

 religions of the time of Asoka was that of the Tirthikas or of the Brahmanic 

 followers of the Vedas. It was those Tirthis who felt most anxious about the 

 perversion of Asoka to the faith of Buddha, and not the Jains. They too put 

 themselves most forward to check the evil ; they everywhere denounced 

 Buddhism as false ; and kej^t numbers of the people attached to Hinduism. 

 They again deterred the brother of Asoka from becoming a Buddha, and 

 set up the fratricidal war which terminated so disastrously against their 

 protege and his ancestral religion. And if Vitasoka was a Hindu, it would 

 be too much to say that his elder brother in his youth was a Jain, and that 

 he had got it from his ancestors. The two uterine brothers could not but 

 have been brought up in the same religion ; and since Vitasoka was a Hindu 

 according to data admittedly " contributed by the very nidus of Buddhism," 

 the conclusion becomes all but inevitable that his brother likewise was one 

 until he became a Bauddha. 



The Peesident said that he had not been able to read the whole of 

 Mr. Thomas's paper although that gentleman had kindly sent him a por- 

 tion of the proof. He was therefore hardly competent to discuss the ques- 

 tion raised by Dr. Rajendralala Mitra. 



At the same time more and more materials were daily accumulating 

 and it was perhaps premature to form any very positive thBory as to the 

 exact nature of Asoka's earlier faith. Even since Mr. Thomas's article was 

 sent to press translations had appeared in the ' Indian Antiquary' by Dr. 

 Biihler of General Cunningham's singular dated inscrij^tions ascribed to 

 Asoka, and if these were correctly ascribed, as it seemed scarcely possible to 

 doubt they were, then a new light had been shed on Asoka's religious feelings, 

 for in these inscriptions, recorded at the close of his long reign, he recorded 

 that though he had held the true faith J for many years, he admitted 

 that he had held it in a lukewarm fashion, and that it was only for the 

 preceding twelve months that he had taken such measures as effectually to 

 put a stop to the worship of the gods formerly held in reverence, 



* Journal Eoy. As. Soc. IX. p. 171. 

 t Beal's Chinese Tripithaka, pp. 88, 89. 



X That by this was meant Buddhism there can hardly now be any reasonable 

 doubt, 



