low-caste adventurer to be the first Kakkavatti Râga[1]. To the people of that time Kandragupta seemed to be lord of the world, for to them India was the world—just as European writers even now talk complacently of 'the world' while ignoring three-fourths of the human race.
'Is it surprising.' as I have asked elsewhere, 'that this unity of power in one man made a deep impression upon them? Is it surprising that, like Romans worshipping Augustus, or like Greeks adding the glow of the sun-myth to the glory of Alexander, the Indians should have formed an ideal of their Kakkavatti, and have transferred to this new ideal many of the dimly sacred and half-understood traits of the Vedic heroes? Is it surprising that the Buddhists should have found it edifying to recognise in their hero "the Kakkavatti of Righteousness;" and that the story of the Buddha should have become tinged with the colouring of these Kakkavatti myths?'
In point of fact we know that in later works the attraction of this poetic ideal led to the almost complete disregard of the simpler narrative which seemed so poor and meagre in comparison; and M. Senart has shown how large a proportion of the later poem called the Lalita Vistara is inspired by it. When, in isolated passages of the Book of the Great Decease, we find the earliest germs of this fruitful train of thought, we are I think safe in concluding that it assumed its present form after the notorious career of Kandragupta had made him supreme in the valley of the Ganges.
All the above arguments tend in one direction; namely, that the final redaction of the Book of the Great Decease must be assigned to the latter part of the fourth century before Christ, or to the earlier part of the following century. And so much alike are it and all the other Suttas translated in this volume in their form, in their views of life, and in
- ↑ I have ventured in my 'Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon,' p. 51, to point out that the Councils of Vesâli were very possibly held just at the time when Nanda was defeated by Kandragupta. Târanâtha, the Tibetan historian, while placing the Councils, like all the later authorities, under an Asoka (probably Kandragupta), says (p. 41 of Wassilief's German translation) that the assembled brethren were fed by Nanda.
