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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
inscribed with the names of Káśyapa, Moggaliputra, and Sariputra, from which he would seem to infer that the topes must have been erected soon after their deaths, or some time between 550 B.C. and 250 B.C.; but, as he himself remarks, the reliques of Buddha and his principal disciples were very widely scattered, being found in different places; and once the notion of their sanctity was adopted, they were no doubt multiplied, as so many pious frauds, in order to give a reputation to the building in which they were said to be enshrined; similar vases were also found at Satdhara and Andher, furnishing examples of this multiplication of relics in the same immediate neighbourhood. Their asserted presence, in any monument, is no more a proof of its antiquity than would the hairs of Buddha, if ever dug up, prove the Shwedagon of Rangoon to have been built in his day. No legitimate conclusion can be drawn, therefore, from inscriptions of this class, as to the date of the Sánchi monuments, whilst the name of a Sát Karni prince is a palpable indication of their being erected subsequent to the Christian era. The topes of Ceylon, however, appear to be of an earlier date, if we may credit the tradition which ascribes the erection of the Ruanvelli mound at Anuradhapura to king Dutthagamani, who reigned, 161 B.c. to 137 B.C.*
A somewhat earlier period than that of the Indian Sthúpas may be assigned to another important class
* [Lassen, Ind. Alt., II, 428 f. Journ. As. Society Bengal, XVI, 221.]
