HENRY T. NILES.
TOLEDO, January 1, 1894.
* * * * *
Since this work was in the hands of the printer I have read the recent
work of Bishop Copelston, of Columbo, Ceylon, and it was a source of no
small gratification to find him in all material points agreeing with
the result of my somewhat extensive investigations as given within, for
in Ceylon, if anywhere, we would expect accuracy. Here the great
Buddhist development first comes in contact with authentic history
during the third century B.C. in the reign of the great Asoka, the
discovery of whose rock inscriptions shed such a flood of light on
primitive Buddhism, while it still retained enough of its primitive
power, as we learn from those inscriptions themselves, to turn that
monarch from a course of cruel tyranny, and, as we learn from the
history of Ceylon, to induce his son and daughter to abandon royalty
and become the first missionaries to that beautiful island.
H.T.N.
INTRODUCTION.
The golden age--when men were brothers all,
The golden rule their law and God their king;
When no fierce beasts did through the forests roam,
Nor poisonous reptiles crawl upon the ground;
When trees bore only wholesome, luscious fruits,
And thornless roses breathed their sweet perfumes;
When sickness, sin and sorrow were unknown,
And tears but spoke of joy too deep for words;
When painless death but led to higher life,
A life that knows no end, in that bright world
Whence angels on the ladder Jacob saw,
Descending, talk with man as friend to friend--
That age of purity and peace had passed,
But left a living memory behind,
Cherished and handed down from sire to son
Through all the scattered peoples of the earth,
A living prophecy of what this world,
This sad and sinful world, might yet become.
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