530 Buddhist Chronology. [Sept. 



regarded as an arbitrary alteration on my part. It ia a correction, 

 the adoption of which cannot be resisted without impugning the 

 authority of authentic Buddhistic history, in which " Na'ga'rjuna" 

 (as Professor Wilson himself surmises) under the name of " Na'ga 

 Se'na" enjoys a distinguished celebrity. He does not appear ever to 

 have visited Ceylon, and as the Attakathd extant here only com- 

 prise a continuous record of Indian events up to the period when the 

 third convocation was held in A. B. 235 or B. C. 307, while he 

 himself nourished in A. B. 500 or B. C. 43, the only record of 

 Na'ga' Se'na in this island, (as far as I am aware,) excepting some 

 unconnected allusions to him in Buddhaghdsds Attakathd, is the 

 Milindapanno (commonly called Milinapprashno) , a work which derives 

 its title from his dialectic controversy with Milindu the raja of Sdgald. 

 In that work, from which I shall presently make some extracts, it is 

 specifically stated that he appeared (in fulfilment, of course, of an 

 assumed prediction of Sa'kya Sinha) five hundred years after the 

 death of Buddha ; and that work, moreover, contains the names of 

 the six Arhatwas, (Pali Arahantd,) who, most fortunately for the illus- 

 tration and substantiation of my case, are referred to in the four 

 apparently insignificant words with which this Sanscrit quotation 

 concludes. In Professor Wilson's translation of these four words, 

 the negative " na" has been overlooked, and he has rendered them 

 into " he was the asylum of the six Arhatwas," instead of translating 

 them " he did not recognize," i. e. he denounced, " the six Ar- 

 hatwas." 



With these explanatory remarks, I venture to offer the following 

 translation of this valuable Sanscrit quotation. 



" They (Hushka, Jusrka, CanishkaJ of Turushca descent, were 

 princes asylums of virtue, who founded colleges and chetiyas in Suscha and 

 other countries. During the entire period of their rule, the whole of 

 Cashmir was under the spiritual controul of ascetic sages, eminent for 

 their rigid piety. Thereafter, when (half a thousand) five hundred years 

 had elapsed in this (land), as well as the whole world, from the period 

 that the sanctified Sa'kya Sinha attained Parinirvritti, the pre-eminently 

 endowed Bodhisatwa, Na'ga'rjuna, became the (spiritual) lord of this and 

 many other lands, and did not recognize (i. e. denounced) the six Arhatwat 

 (who were his contemporaries)." 



a Naga kingdom, half a thousand (five hundred) yojanas in extent, bounded by 

 the ocean." Ch. V. " Purisdnun dasaddhehi satehi parhvarito :" "attended bj 

 retinue of five hundred men." I am not aware whether this remark be applica- 

 ble to the Sanscrit language also ; nor does it appear to me to be material, as 

 Kalha'na probably quotes from a Pali Buddhistical work. 



