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we have of the nature of the ancient tradition. He quotes, from the old Sinhalese commentary, a nun. ber of the innemonic verses also contained in the Island Chronicle, and gives us, in Pali, the substance of the Sinhalese prose with which they had originally been accompanied.
A generation afterwards Mahānāma wrote his great work, the Mahi-r'ansa. He was no historian, and had, besides the material used by his two predecessors, only popular legends to work on. But he was a literary artist, and his book is really an epic poem of remarkable inerit, with the national idol, Dushța Gāmini, the conqueror of the invading hosts of the Tamils, as its hero. What he says of other kings, and of Asoka amongst them, is only by way of introduction, or of epilogue, to the inain story.
I have compared historically the various versions of one episode in these and other narratives (that of Asoka and the Buddha relics),' and have shown how interesting are the results to be derived from that method. To retell such an episode in one's own words inay be a successful literary effort, but it would be of no historical value. It would give us merely a new version, and a version that had not been believed anywhere, at any time, in India. By the historical method, a few facts of importance inay yet be gathered from amidst the poetical reveries of these later authors.
So, for instance, the tradition—Indian of course in origin, but preserved in Nepal-states that Asoka's mother was the daughter of a brahınin living in
17. R. A. S., 1901, pp. 397-410.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
