After the death of King Tissa and of Mahinda, Ceylon was twice overrun and conquered by Dravidian conquerors, who were finally expelled by Watta Gamini about 88 b. c., when the three Pitakas, which had been so long preserved by word of mouth, are said to have been reduced to writing.
About 450 a. d. Buddhism was introduced into Burma, and in 638 it penetrated to Siam. Java seems to have received Buddhist missionaries about the same time, and Buddhism apparently spread thence to Sumatra. All these countries belonged to the Southern Buddhist school.
Northern Buddhism was the prevailing faith in the northwest of India before the commencement of the Christian Era. Pushpamitra, the King of Kashmir, whose history will be found in the next volume, persecuted the Buddhists early in the second century b. c., and Pushpamitra 's son, Agnimitra, met the Greeks on the banks of the Ganges. The Greeks under Menander were victorious, and about 150 b. c. extended their conquests as far as the Ganges. But the victory of the Greeks was no loss to Buddhism, and Nagasena, a renowned Buddhist teacher of the time, had religious controversies with the Greek king, which have been preserved to us in a most interesting Pali work.
Between the first and second centuries after Christ the Yueh-chi under Kanishka conquered Kashmir. Kanishka's vast empire extended over Kabul, over Yarkand and Khotan, over Kashmir and Rajputana, and over the whole of the Pan jab, to Gujarat and Sind
