Note 43 — BEFORE THE VEIL.

From the accounts of Strabo and Megasthenes, who visited Palibothras, it would seem that the persons termed by him Samanean, or Brachmane priests, were simply Buddhists. “The singularly subtile replies of the Samanean or Brahman philosophers, in their interview with the conqueror, will be found to contain the spirit of the Buddhist doctrine,” remarks Upham. (See the “History and Doctrine of Buddhism;” and Hale’s “Chronology,” vol. iii., p. 238.)