However easy, at
first sight, it may seem to be to brush out of history a real personage,
it becomes more difficult to prove the non-existence of Kalasoka by
calling him "false," while the second Asoka is termed "the real," in the
face of the evidence of the Puranas, written by the bitterest enemies of
the Buddhists, the Brahmans of the period. The Vayu and Matsya Puranas
mention both in their lists of their reigning sovereigns of the Nanda
and the Morya dynasties. And, though they connect Chandragupta with a
Sudra Nanda, they do not deny existence to Kalasoka, for the sake of
invalidating Buddhist chronology. However falsified the now extant
texts of both the Vaya and Matsya Puranas, even accepted as they at
present stand "in their true meaning," which Professor Max Muller
(notwithstanding his confidence) fails to seize, they are not "at
variance with Buddhist chronology before Chandragupta." Not, at any
rate, when the real Chandragupta instead of the false Sandrocottus of
the Greeks is recognized and introduced. Quite independently of the
Buddhist version, there exists the historical fact recorded in the
Brahmanical as well as in the Burmese and Tibetan versions, that in the
year 63 of Buddha, Susinago of Benares was chosen king by the people of
Pataliputra, who made away with Ajatasatru's dynasty.
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