Though King Bimbisara welcomed the Buddha to his capital, and Buddhism made rapid headway amongst the masses, he does not appear to have himself embraced the new religion, and it is not till after Alexander the Great’s expedition had for the first time brought an European conqueror on to Indian soil, and a new dynasty had transferred the seat of government to Pataliputra, the modern Patna, on the Ganges, that perhaps the greatest of Indian rulers, the Emperor Asoka, who reigned from 272 to circa 232 B.C., made Buddhism the state religion of his Empire.  Tradition has it, that when Buddha on his last wanderings passed by the fort which King Ajatasatni was building at Pataliputra, he prophesied for it a great and glorious future.  It had already fulfilled that prophecy when the Greek Ambassador, Megasthenes, visited it in 303 B.C.  A few remains only are being laboriously rescued from the waters of the Ganges, under which Pataliputra is for the most part buried.  But at that time it spread for ten miles along the river front; five hundred and seventy towers crowned its walls, which were pierced by sixty-four gates, and the total circumference of the city was twenty-four miles.  The palace rivalled those of the Kings of Persia, and a striking topographical similarity has been lately traced between the artificial features of the lay-out of Pataliputra and the natural features of Persepolis, King Darius’s capital in Southern Persia.

Pataliputra became the capital of India under Chandragupta Maurya, who, soldier of fortune and usurper that he was, transformed the small kingdom of Magadha into a mighty empire.  Known to Greek historians as Sandrokottos, young Chandragupta had been in Alexander’s camp on the Indus, and had even, it is said, offered his services to the Macedonian king.  In the confusion which followed Alexander’s death, he had raised an army with which he fell on the Macedonian frontier garrisons, and then, flushed with victory, turned upon the King of Magadha, whom he dethroned.  After eighteen years of constant fighting he had extended his frontiers to the Hindu Kush in the north, and nearly down to the latitude of Madras in the south.  He had, at the same time, established a remarkable system of both civil and military administration by which he was able to consolidate his vast conquests.  His war office was scientifically divided into six boards for maintaining and supplying his huge fighting force of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry, 9000 elephants, and 8000 war chariots, besides fully equipped transport and commissariat services.  No less scientific was the system of civil government as illustrated by the municipal institutions of Pataliputra.  There, again, there were six boards dealing respectively with trade, industries, wages, local taxation, the control of foreign residents and visitors, and, perhaps most extraordinary of all, with vital statistics.  Equally admirable was the solicitude displayed for agriculture, then, as now, the greatest of Indian