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best introduce us to the opportunity we now have of ascertaining what is probable, if we cannot positively affirm that it is all true.
BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
It is sometimes supposed that the classical authors supply us with evidence of the Buddhist religion in India three centuries before the era of Christianity, drawing this inference especially from the fragments which remain of the writings of Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleucus to Chandragupta, about the year B. C. 295, according to his latest editor, Schwanbeck *, and to whose descriptions of various particulars respecting India the other ancient writers are almost wholly indebted. It is well known that he divides the Indian philosophers into two classes, the Brachmanai and the Sarmanai; and the latter it has been concluded intend the Śramanas, one of the titles of the Buddhist ascetics. This is not impossible. If we trust to the traditions of the Buddhists, their founder lived at least two centuries before the mission of Megasthenes, and in that case we might expect to meet with his disciples in the descriptions of the ambassador. At the same time Śramana is not exclusively the designation of a Buddhist, it is equally that of a Brahmanical ascetic, and its use does not positively determine to which class it is to be applied'. In truth, it is clear
* [Megasth. Indica, p. 20. Lassen, Ind. Alt., II, 209. 663.]
When Arjuna goes to the forest he is attended amongst others by Śramaná Vanaukasáh, forest-dwelling Śramanas: these could not have been Buddhists,-Mahabharat, Adi Parva, v. 7742.
