Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/59

Rh expect from a great moral teacher is wholly wanting in Buddha's words, and is poorly compensated for by the politeness of a courtier. Whatever be the reader's judgment concerning the sincerity of the royal penitent or the moral courage of his father confessor, it is clear from the unanimity of tradition that the crime on which the story is based really occurred, and that Ajatasatru slew his father to gain a throne. But when the Ceylonese chronicler asks us to believe that he was followed in due course by four other parricide kings, of whom the last was dethroned by his minister, with the approval of a justly indignant people, too great a demand is made upon the reader's credulity.

The crime by which he gained the throne naturally involved Ajatasatru in war with the aged King of Kosala, whose sister, the queen of the murdered Bimbisara, is alleged to have died from grief. Fortune in the contest inclined now to one side and now to another, and on one occasion, it is said, Ajatasatru was carried away as a prisoner in chains to his opponent's capital. Ultimately peace was concluded, and a princess of Kosala was given in marriage to the King of Magadha. The facts of the struggle are obscure, being wrapped up in legendary matter from which it is impossible to disentangle them, but the probability is that Ajatasatru won for Magadha a decided preponderance over its neighbour of Kosala. It is certain that the latter kingdom is not again mentioned as an independent power, and that in the fourth century B. C. it formed an integral part of the Magadha empire.