1 The Greek Contacts of Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka and their Relevance to Mauryan and Buddhist Chronology Joe Cribb Most attempts to date the life of the historical Buddha rely on the need to find an absolute fixed point within the chronology created for the historical context of his life. Although a credible context has been constructed both from textual sources and from archaeological and cultural research, only one fixed point, or better to say group of fixed points, has ever been accepted as a meaningful determinant for pinning down the absolute dating of ancient Indian history. This paper sets out to question the precision of the starting point for this chronology. This fixed starting point is the dating of the Mauryan kings of northern India by correlating them with the comparatively well-established chronology of their western neighbours in the Greek world. The correlation was first spotted by William Jones (1790) and given substance by James Prinsep and George Turnour (the story of this discovery has been recently retold by Charles Allen 2012). The implications of this correlation for dating the Mauryans and thereby the life of the Buddha has been presented in many places and with fairly consistent conclusions. Sober and thoughtful examples of accounts of Mauryan history based on this correlation can be found in A.K. Majumdarǯs ȋͳͻ͹͹, [ͳ] ͳͶ͸–164) masterful history of ancient )ndia, R.K. Mookerjiǯs chapter on the early Mauryas in the encyclopedic history of )ndia ȋMookerji ͳͻͷͳȌ and in Romila Thaparǯs ȋͳͻ͸ͳ and the revised edition in ͳͻͻ͹Ȍ history of Ashoka [Aśoka]. Such accounts are usually so logical and so persuasive that it is