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* Of Hindu Lingams, rather.
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Sakya Muni’s Place in History

No Orientalist, save perhaps, the same wise, not to say deep, Prof.  Weber, opposes more vehemently than Prof.  Max Muller Hindu and Buddhist chronology.  Evidently if an Indophile he is not a Buddhophile, and General Cunningham, however independent otherwise in his archeological researches, agrees with him more than would seem strictly prudent in view of possible future discoveries.* We have then to refute in our turn this great Oxford professor’s speculations.

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* Notwithstanding Prof.  M. Muller’s regrettable efforts to invalidate
every Buddhist evidence, he seems to have ill-succeeded in proving his
case, if we can judge from the openly expressed opinion of his own
German confreres.   In the portion headed “Tradition as to Buddha’s Age”
(pp. 283-288) in his “Hist. of Ind.  Lit.,” Prof.  Weber very aptly
remarks, “Nothing like positive certainty, therefore, is for the present
attainable.  Nor have the subsequent discussions of this topic by Max
Muller (1859) (’Hist.  A.S.L.’ p. 264 ff), by Westergaard (1860), ’Ueber
Buddha’s Todesjahr,’ and by ’Kern Over de Jaartelling der Zuidel
Buddhisten’ so far yielded any definite results.”   Nor are they likely
to.
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To the evidence furnished by the Puranas and Mahavansa, which he also finds hopelessly entangled and contradictory (though the perfect accuracy of that Sinhalese history is most warmly acknowledged by Sir Emerson Tennant, the historian), he opposes the Greek classics and their chronology.  With him, it is always “Alexander’s invasion” and “Conquest,” and “the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator-Megasthenes,” while even the faintest record of such “conquest” is conspicuously absent from Brahmanic record; and although in an inscription of Piyadasi are mentioned the names of Antiochus, Ptolemy, Magus, Antigonus, and even of the great Alexander himself, as vassals of the king Piyadasi, the Macedonian is yet called the “Conqueror of India.”  In other words, while any casual mention of Indian affairs by a Greek writer of no great note must be accepted unchallenged, no record of the Indians, literary or monumental, is entitled to the smallest consideration.  Until rubbed against the touch-stone of Hellenic infallibility it must be set down, in the words of Professor Weber, as “of course mere empty boasting.”  Oh, rare Western sense of justice! *

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* No Philaryan would pretend for a moment on the strength of the
Piyadasi inscriptions that Alexander of Macedonia, or either of the
other sovereigns mentioned, was claimed as an actual “vassal” of
Chandragupta.   They did not even pay tribute, but only a kind of
quit-rent annually for lands ceded in the north:   as the grant-tablets
could show.   But the inscription, however misinterpreted, shows most
clearly that Alexander was never the conqueror of India.