Without the knowledge of those various epochs, it is difficult to understand with anything approaching to clearness and exactness the dates that we find alluded to and mentioned in the Burmese literary compositions. The foregoing particulars appear to be sufficient for all practical purposes. [34] From this passage we see that, in those days of remote antiquity, there existed in the Indian Peninsula individuals who, led away by a fanaticism still existing in our own days, devoted themselves to rigorous and extravagant penances, often in a state of complete nakedness. In the days of Alexander the Great, the same fanatics were met with in the Punjaub. Such ridiculous and unnatural exhibitions, far from being approved of and countenanced by the founder of Buddhism, were positively prohibited. Though he aimed at subduing passions, and elevating the spiritual principle above the material one, he recommended in the spiritual warfare a line of conduct more consonant with reason, and supplied his disciples with weapons of a far better quality and a superior description. [35] It is much to be regretted that no details concerning that third assembly of the Buddhists in Pataliputra could be found by the writer in the manuscript he has in his possession. The cause that occasioned the holding of the council was the desire to establish a perfect unity in the practices of discipline among the religious, and to come to an agreement on the subject of the genuineness of the scriptures. During the period of 236 years that elapsed from the death of Gaudama, Buddhism seems to have remained confined within the limits of Magatha, that is to say, north and south Behar. Its hold over the mind of the people within those limits appears to have been very imperfect and uncertain, particularly in the parts north of the Ganges. It is from the reign of King Athoka that the propagation of Buddhism in every direction dates. The uninterrupted successes which attended his arms enabled him to afford a powerful support to the propagators of the new religion in the remotest parts which they visited. But we have no reason to suspect that he had recourse to violence in order to gain proselytes. No doubt he protected them, and supplied all their wants on a liberal scale. He does not appear to have extended farther the effects of the countenance he lent to the heralds of the new religion. He built monasteries and dzedis throughout the length and breadth of his immense dominions; he erected stone pillars, which he covered with inscriptions commemorative of his piety and zeal, a few of which exist up to this day. Athoka may be looked upon as a monarch who did more for the propagation of Buddhism in foreign parts than any of those who preceded him or came after him.