And there were two Piyadasis--the
"Sandracottus" Chandragupta and Asoka. And if controverted, the
Orientalists will have to account for this strange inconsistency. If
Asoka was the only "Piyadasi" and the builder of the monuments, and
maker of the rock-inscriptions of this name; and if his inauguration
occurred as conjectured by Professor Max Muller about 259 B.C., in other
words, if he reigned sixty or seventy years later than any of the Greek
kings named on the Piyadasian monuments, what had he to do with their
vassalage or non-vassalage, or how was he concerned with them at all?
Their dealings had been with his grandfather some seventy years
earlier--if he became a Buddhist only after ten years occupancy of the
throne. And finally, three well-known Bhadrasenas can be proved, whose
names spelt loosely and phonetically, according to each writer's dialect
and nationality, now yield a variety of names, from Bindusara,
Bimbisara, and Vindusara, down to Bhadrasena and Bhadrasara, as he is
called in the Vayu Purana. These are all synonymous.
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