Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/173

 EDICTS OF ASOKA 139 were undoubtedly devoted in a special degree to works of piety, but there is no sufficient reason for believing the legends which depict the emperor in his old age as a dotard devo- tee incapable of administering the affairs of the empire. The latest edicts, dated 256 years after the death of Buddha, that is to say, in the year 232 or 231 B. c., must have been pub- lished very shortly before the emperor's death, which is supposed to have occurred at a holy hill near Rajagriha, the ancient capital of Magadha. A large body of tradition affirms that a Buddhist church council was held at the cap- ital by the command and under the patron- age of Asoka in order to settle the canon of scripture and reform abuses in monastic dis- cipline. Although the legendary details of the constitution and proceedings of the coun- cil are clearly unhistorical, the fact of the assembly may be accepted without hesita- tion. If it had met before the thirty-first year of the reign in which the emperor pub- lished the Pillar Edicts, recording his retro- spect of the measures taken for the promo- tion of piety, the council would assuredly have been mentioned in those documents. But they are silent on the subject, and the fair inference is that the council was held m Pillar of Asoka at Allahabad.