Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/46

44 after the Edicts, give a different list of countries and add the names of the missionaries as follows:—

All the names of countries in this list, except Nos. 8 and 9, can be reconciled with the differently worded enumeration in the inscriptions. The inclusion of No. 8, Suvaṇṇabhûmi, which is identified by most authorities with the Pegu and Moulmein territories, is, I believe, at the best, a half-truth; that is to say, that the mission, if really sent, produced little effect. Burma, as a halfway house between India and China, seems to have first received Buddhism effectively early in the Christian era in two streams converging from China on one side and northern India on the other. The close connexion between the Churches of Ceylon and Burma is of much later date.

The exclusion of the Hellenistic kingdoms from the Ceylon list is easily explained when we remember that those kingdoms had ceased to exist centuries before that list was compiled. The omission of the Tamil