Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/207

CONVEKSION OF CEYLON 169 is said to have been followed by a sister named Sangha- mitra (" Friend of the Order "), who did for the nuns of Ceylon all that her brother did for the monks. This legend, which is overlaid by many marvellous inventions, is fiction. The true version, representing Mahendra as the younger brother of Asoka, was well remembered at the imperial capital, Pataliputra, where Fa-hien, at the beginning of the fifth century, was shown the hermitage of Asoka 's saintly brother; and it was still the only version known to Hiuen Tsang in the seventh century. Even when the latter pilgrim took down the Sinhalese legends from the lips of the island monks whom he met at Kanchi, he applied the stories to the brother, not to the son of Asoka. The Mahavamsa seems also to err in attributing to Asoka the despatch of missionaries to Pegu (Sovana- bhumi). No such mission is mentioned in the inscrip- tions, and it is very improbable that Asoka had any dealings with the countries to the east of the Bay of Bengal. His face was turned westwards toward the Hellenistic kingdoms. The Ceylon form of Buddhism appears to have been introduced into Burma and Pegu at a very much later date, and there is reason to believe that the earliest Burmese Buddhism was of the Tantric Mahayana type, imported direct from Northern India many centuries after Asoka 's time. Unfortunately, no definite record has been preserved of the fortunes of the Buddhist missions in the Hellen- istic kingdoms of Asia, Africa, and Europe, nor are the names of the missionaries known. The influence