even the Jews (would have) thought of preserving the date of the birth of Jesus before he had become the founder of a religion.” (Max Muller’s “Hist.  S. L.”) For, while the Jews had been from the first rejecting the claim of Messiah-ship set up by the Chelas of the Jewish prophet and were not expecting their Messiah at that time, the Brahmans (the initiates, at any rate) knew of the coming of him whom they regarded as an incarnation of Divine wisdom, and therefore were well aware of the astrological date of his birth.  If, in after times, in their impotent rage they destroyed every accessible vestige of the birth, life and death of Him, who in his boundless mercy to all creatures had revealed their carefully concealed mysteries and doctrines in order to check the ecclesiastical torrent of ever-growing superstitions, yet there had been a time when he was met by them as an Avatar.  And, though they destroyed, others preserved.

The thousand and one speculations and the torturing of exoteric texts by Archeologist or Paleographer will ill repay the time lost in their study.

The Indian annals specify King Ajatasatru as a contemporary of Buddha, and another Ajatasatru helped to prepare the council 100 years after his death.  These princes were sovereigns of Magadha and have naught to do with Ajatasatru of the Brihad-Aranyaka and the Kaushitaki-Upanishad, who was a sovereign of the Kasis; though Bhadrasena, “the son of Ajatasatru” cursed by Aruni, may have more to do with his namesake the “heir of Chandragupta” than is generally known, Professor Max Miller objects to two Asokas.  He rejects Kalasoka and accepts but Dharmasoka—­in accordance with “Greek” and in utter conflict with Buddhist chronology.  He knows not—­or perhaps prefers to ignore—­that besides the two Asokas there were several personages named Chandragupta and Chandramasa.  Plutarch is set aside as conflicting with the more welcome theory, and the evidence of Justin alone is accepted.  There was Kalasoka, called by some Chandramasa and by others Chandragupta, whose son Nanda was succeeded by his cousin the Chandragupta of Seleucus, and under whom the Council of Vaisali took place “supported by King Nanda” as correctly stated by Taranatha. (None of them were Sudras, and this is a pure invention of the Brahmans.) Then there was the last of the Chandraguptas who assumed the name of Vikrama; he commenced the new era called the Vikramaditya or Samvat and began the new dynasty at Pataliputra, 318 (B.C.)—­according to some European “authorities;” after him his son Bindusara or Bhadrasena—­also Chandragupta, who was followed by Dharmasoka Chandragupta.  And there were two Piyadasis—­the “Sandracottus” Chandragupta and Asoka.  And if controverted, the Orientalists will have to account for this strange inconsistency.  If Asoka was the only “Piyadasi” and the builder of the monuments, and maker of the rock-inscriptions of this name; and if his inauguration occurred as conjectured by Professor Max Muller about