686 



Pali Buddhistical Annals. 



[Aug. 



III. — An examination of the Pdli Buddhistical Annals, No. 3. By 



the Hon hie George Turnour, Esq. Ceylon Civil Service, 



[Continued from Vol. VI. p. 737.] 



In the two preceding articles, an attempt has been made to give a 

 connected account of three great Buddhistical convocations held in 

 India ; as well as to establish the authenticity, and to define the age 

 in which those Pali Annals were compiled from which that account 

 was taken. In due course, in an inquiry chiefly entered into for the 

 illustration of the historical data contained in these records, the next 

 subject for examination would have been the genealogy of the kings 

 of India, had the chronology of the Buddhists anterior to the age of 

 Sakya, exhibited the same degree of authenticity, that the portion 

 subsequent to that era has been found to possess. 



In this respect, however, the Buddhistical writings are unfortunately 

 as defective as the Brahminical. Both the chronology and the 

 historical narrative prior to the advent of Go'tomo' Buddho, are 

 involved in intentional perversion and mystification ; a perversion 

 evidently had recourse to for the purpose of working out the scheme 

 on which he based that wonderful dispensation, which was promulgated 

 over Central India, during his pretended divine mission on earth of 

 forty-five years, between 588 and 543 before the birth of Christ ; and 

 was subsequently recognized, almost throughout the whole of Asia, 

 within two and half centuries from that period. 



Your invaluable discovery of the alphabet in which the inscriptions, 

 undeciphered for ages, which are scattered over India, are written, 

 having proved that those inscriptions are, for the most part, Buddhis- 

 tical, and composed in the Pali language, will in themselves have 

 afforded a powerful incentive to the oriental scholar to devote his best 

 attention to the examination of the ancient annals of that creed 

 still extant in that language. And when, on the one hand, by an 

 extraordinary and fortunate coincidence, the events recorded in those 

 inscriptions are found to be commemorative, chiefly, of the edicts of 

 the identical ruler of India, of whom the most detailed information is 

 given in the only Pali historical work yet brought to the notice of the 

 European literary world ; and on the other, by the preposterous 

 pretensions of the Buddhists, their mystified legends of antiquity are 

 solemnly put forth as an equally authentic and continuous history 

 from the commencement of the creation, unless timely precaution be 

 taken to avert the delusion, an exaggerated amount of expectation 

 may be created, which must unavoidably end in a proportionate measure 



