84 



Buddha, was educated in all the knowledge possessed by perhaps 

 the then most civilized country in India. His principal adherents 

 were, like himself, of regal, as well as of princely and priestly 

 families, and they too would be highly educated men. It is not 

 therefore reasonable to suppose, that while for a period of forty- 

 five years he continued to propagate his doctrines in the adjacent 

 kingdoms of Maghada, (North and South Behar) Bhagalpur, 

 Gorukhpur, Oude, Benares, and the territory of Tirhut, his disciples 

 did not commit to writing the more important, if not the whole of 

 them ; or that he himself did not from time to time revise and 

 correct what had been written. 



Even the Asoka inscriptions, the great Indian enigma until 

 deciphered by Prinsep, whatever else they prove, prove this,— 

 that although not cut until about 230 years after the death of 

 Buddha,* the art of writing was not, and could not have been 



second thousand years preceding the Christian era, but at whatever time the 

 collection was made — when its verses were first rescued from the custody of oral 

 tradition, and committed to writing — it constituted a decided era in Indian 

 literary history, and " from this time the texts became a chief object of the science 

 and industry of the nation, as their contents had always been of its highest 

 reverence and admiration; and so thorough and religious was the care bestowed 

 upon their preservation, that, notwithstanding their mass and the thousands of 

 years which have elapsed since their collection, not a single various reading, so 

 far as is yet known, has been suffered to make its way into them."— See article 

 ■ On the main results of the later Vedic Researches in Germany, by William D. 

 Whitney, in Journal of Araer. Or. Soc. 1853, vol. iii. p. 309. — Also, Professor Max 

 Muller's Lecture on the Vedas in ' Chips from a German Workshop,' vol. h pp. 15-16. 



* There is abundatit reason for concluding that the Buddhist era, commencing 

 B. c. 543 has been antedated by 66 years, and that the correct date should be 477 

 B.C. Asdka acceded to the throne 214 a.b. and was inaugurated four years 

 later. The inscriptions were cut subsequent to his inauguration ; — one of them, 

 that at Girnar, fixes the date at 12 years after that event =230 a. b., or 313 

 b. c, accepted Buddhist era ; but b. c. 247 according to the corrected chronology. 



