Greece was never concerned with Buddhism, and besides the fact that the
classics furnish their few synchronistic dates simply upon the hearsay
of their respective authors--a few Greeks, who themselves lived
centuries before the writers quoted--their chronology is itself too
defective, and their historical records, when it was a question of
national triumphs, too bombastic and often too diametrically opposed to
fact, to inspire with confidence any one less prejudiced than the
average European Orientalist. To seek to establish the true dates in
Indian history by connecting its events with the mythical "invasion,"
while confessing that "one would look in vain in the literature of the
Brahmans or Buddhists for any allusion to Alexander's conquest, and
although it is impossible to identify any of the historical events
related by Alexander's companions with the historical tradition of
India," amounts to something more than a mere exhibition of incompetence
in this direction: were not Prof. Max Muller the party concerned--we
might say that it appears almost like predetermined dishonesty.
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