" Nor are they likely
to.
---------
To the evidence furnished by the Puranas and Mahavansa, which he also
finds hopelessly entangled and contradictory (though the perfect
accuracy of that Sinhalese history is most warmly acknowledged by Sir
Emerson Tennant, the historian), he opposes the Greek classics and their
chronology. With him, it is always "Alexander's invasion" and
"Conquest," and "the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator-Megasthenes," while
even the faintest record of such "conquest" is conspicuously absent from
Brahmanic record; and although in an inscription of Piyadasi are
mentioned the names of Antiochus, Ptolemy, Magus, Antigonus, and even of
the great Alexander himself, as vassals of the king Piyadasi, the
Macedonian is yet called the "Conqueror of India." In other words,
while any casual mention of Indian affairs by a Greek writer of no great
note must be accepted unchallenged, no record of the Indians, literary
or monumental, is entitled to the smallest consideration. Until rubbed
against the touch-stone of Hellenic infallibility it must be set down,
in the words of Professor Weber, as "of course mere empty boasting.
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