at that time, of recent acquisition in the dominions of the monarch 

 whose edicts they recorded. The application of the art to the 

 perpetuation of such edicts in imperishable letters graven on 

 rocks and stone, might be a novel and a happy idea — the sug- 

 gestion of a Buddhist hierarch, — but as edicts so made public — 

 at Allahabad, and Delhi, in northern India ; at Girnar in Gujarat, 

 in the west ; at Dhauli in Katak, in the east ; and, in a wholly 

 different alphabet, at Kapurdigiri in Afghanistan, — edicts which 

 were intended to be read by every one, the cutting of the inscrip- 

 tions presupposed a wide-spread possession amongst the subjects 



In his discussion of the accuracy of the dates assigned to the death of Buddda and 

 the landing of Vijaya in Ceylon, Mr. Turnour writes (Journ. As. Soc, Sept. 1837) 

 "I proceed to offer the following remarks as explanatory of the grounds on which 

 I am disposed to consider, that the error of the above discrepancy was designedly 

 committed by the early compilers of these Buddhistical annals, partly in India, 

 and partly in Ceylon, for the purpose of working out certain pretended prophecies 

 hereafter noticed. 



" In the first place, these minutely adjusted dates are to be found only in 

 Buddhaghosa's Bali version of the Atthakatha, and in the Mahawanso ; the 

 latter history being avowedly compiled from the Sinhalese Atthakatha, from 

 which Buddhaghdsa translated his version also of the sacred commentaries into 

 Pali . . , . , Both works, therefore, are derived from the same source, viz. the 

 Atthakatha brought from India by Mahinda in b. c. 307, and promulgated by 

 him in Ceylon in the native language. 



" In the second place, these dates are called forth, for the purpose of shewing 

 that certain pretended prophecies of Sakya and his disciples, all tending directly 

 or indirectly to invest the Indian emperor Asoka, the hierarch Moggaliputtatissa, 

 and the island of Ceylon, with special importance, as the predicted agents by whom, 

 and the predicted theatre in which, Buddhism should attain great celebrity, were 

 actually realised. In the third place, no mention whatever is made of these 

 prophecies in those parts of the text of the Pitakattaya in which the other 

 revelations of Sakya himself, are recorded; and where indeed, until a recent dis- 

 cussion raised by me, the heads of the Buddhistical Church in Kandy believed 

 they were to be found." 



M 



