Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/48

 i8 HISTORY OF INDIAN ARCHITECTURE. assembled there on that occasion, 1 and if so they must have represented a great multitude. But the accounts of this, and of a second convocation, said, by the southern Buddhists, to have been held one hundred years afterwards at Vaijali, are of doubtful authenticity. Indeed, the whole annals of the .Saijunaga dynasty from the death of Buddha till the accession of Chandragupta, dr. B.C. 320, are about the least satisfactory of the time. Those of Ceylon were falsified in order to make the landing of Vijaya, the alleged first conqueror from Kalinga, coincident with the date of Buddha's death, while a period of some length elapsed between the two events. 2 We have annals, and we may possibly recover inscriptions 3 and sculptures belonging to this period, and though it is most improbable we shall recover any archi- tectural remains, there are possibly materials existing which, when utilised, may suffice for the purpose. The kings of this dynasty seem to have been considered as of a low caste, and were not, consequently, in favour either with the Brahman or, at that time, with the Buddhist ; and no events which seem to have been thought worthy of being remembered, except the second convocation the fact of which is doubtful are recorded as happening in their reigns, after the death of the great Ascetic or, at all events, of being recorded in such annals as we possess. MAURYA DYNASTY, B.C. 320 TO 180. The case was widely different with the Maurya dynasty, which was certainly one of the most brilliant, and is fortunately one of the best known, of the ancient dynasties of India. The first king was Chandragupta, the Sandrokottos of the Greeks, to 1 See Rockhill, ' Life of the Buddha,' p. 156; Kern's 'Histoire du Bouddhisme dans 1'Inde,' torn. ii. pp. 253ff. (French trans. ). 2 There is an error of about sixty years in the usual date B.C. 543, derived from the Singhalese chronicles, which is else- where corrected. The revised date may not be precisely correct, but it must be approximately so. the earliest are square or oblong punch- marked pieces, which seem to date from about a century before Alexander, and supply no historical data. The late Mr. Ed. Thomas supposed a coin, bearing the name of Amoghabhuti, a Kuninda, belonged to one of the nine Nandas with whom this dynasty closed ('Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' N.S., vol. i. pp. 447ff.). It is now known that such
 * We have no very early Hindu coins ;

coins do not belong to a date earlier than about B.C. 100. The earliest coins of historical value for India are those of the Grseco-Baktrians and their con- temporaries or successors on the north- west frontier.