Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor (23 page)

For such an object is all this done, that it may endure to my sons and their sons’ sons – as long as the sun and the moon shall last. Wherefore let them follow its injunctions and be obedient thereto – and let it be held in reverence and respect. In the twenty-seventh year of my reign have I caused this edict to be written: so sayeth Devanamapiya – ‘Let stone pillars be prepared and let this edict of religion be engraven thereon, that it may endure unto the remotest ages.’

The modern translation may be more precise but no less moving (see Appendix,
p. 425
).

*

Prinsep’s breaking of the Brahmi No. 1 script, his translations of the Sanchi donations and the seven Pillar Edicts of the Firoz Shah Lat inscription, and his identification of their author as Devanamapiya Piyadasi came so fast one upon another that they gave his fellow Orientalists little respite. But hard on the heels of Prinsep’s first tentative identification of Piyadasi, Beloved-of-the-Gods as King Devanamapiyatissa of Lanka, published in the July 1837 issue of
the JASB
, came a dramatic response from George Turnour in Colombo.

‘I have made a most important discovery,’ Turnour wrote: ‘You will find in the Introduction to my
Epitome
that a valuable collection of Pali works was brought back to Ceylon from Siam, by George Nodaris, modliar (chief of the cinnamon department, and then a Buddhist priest) in 1812.’
¹³
This collection of Pali texts included a copy of the
Island Chronicle
, the original chronicle from which the later
Great Dynastic Chronicle
took its earliest historical material, but in a less corrupted version than that upon which Turnour had based his translation – and with crucial differences. While casually turning the leaves of the manuscript Turnour had hit upon an entirely new passage relating to the identity of Piyadasi. In translation it read: ‘Two hundred and eighteen years after the beatitude of Buddha was the inauguration of Piyadassi … who, the grandson of Chandragupta, and own son of Bindusara, was at that time Viceroy of Ujjayani.’

Here was Turnour’s revelation. The King Devanamapiya Piyadasi of the Firoz Shah Lat inscription was not King Devanamapiyatissa of Lanka, as Prinsep had assumed. He was his Indian contemporary Ashoka Maurya. The unfortunate Wesleyan missionary William Fox had published just such a conclusion four years earlier but had gone to his grave
unacknowledged, so it fell to George Turnour to receive all the plaudits – and rightly so.
¹⁴
Thus, the identity of Ashoka Maurya as the author of the Rock and Pillar Edicts was established beyond reasonable doubt – another milestone on the road to the recovery of India’s lost history, another missing piece of the jigsaw.

Prinsep announced the next breakthrough in the August issue of
JASB:
his translation of eye-copies of two inscriptions in the Society’s collection which had come from the Nagurjuni caves north of Gaya.
¹⁵
These were William Harrington’s eye-copies, which had been gathering dust for almost forty years. They were in Brahmi and almost identical, except that one referred to the ‘Brahman’s cave’ and the other to the ‘Milkman’s cave’. According to Prinsep’s reading, they had been granted to ‘the most devoted sect of Bauddha ascetics’ by ‘Dasharatha, the Beloved-of-the-Gods, immediately on his ascending the throne’. Dasharatha had used exactly the same epithet as that used by Ashoka in the Pillar Edicts. Furthermore, the name Dasharatha appeared in the lists of kings of Magadha as given in several of the
Puranas
: ‘Looking into the Magadha catalogue we find a raja also named Dasharatha next but one below Dharma Asoka, the great champion of the Buddhist faith.’ Here was evidence that a grandson of Ashoka had ruled in Magadha and had used the same epithet as Ashoka, perhaps as an expression of identification with him.

What Prinsep declared to be ‘another link of the same chain of discovery’
¹⁶
came before the end of the year with the arrival in Calcutta of Markham Kittoe’s improved version of the Dhauli inscription. Kittoe had been asked to make a second and more accurate copy at Prinsep’s request, and had done so at some cost, for not only had he re-encountered the bear cubs,
now fully grown, but had also hurt himself by falling off the edict rock: ‘Being intent on my interesting task I forgot my ticklish footing; the bearer had also fallen asleep and let go his hold, so that having overbalanced myself I was pitched head foremost down the rock.’
¹⁷

Kittoe’s much improved facsimile of the Dhauli inscription arrived just as Prinsep was completing his first reading of an inaccurate eye-copy of the Girnar Rock Edicts. ‘I had just groped my way through the Girnar text,’ Prinsep afterwards wrote, ‘which proved to be, like that of the pillars, a series of edicts promulgated by Asoka … when I took up the Cuttack [Dhauli] inscriptions of which Lieut. Kittoe had been engaged in making a lithographic copy for my journal. To my surprise and joy I discovered that the greater part of these inscriptions was identical with the inscription at Girnar!’
¹⁸

Despite being located on India’s east and west coasts and nine hundred miles apart, these two great rocks bore messages that were for the most part identical, or, as Prinsep put it, ‘from the first to the tenth [edict] they keep pace together’.
¹⁹
At this point the two diverged, the Girnar rock carrying three edicts not found at Dhauli, and the Dhauli rock two not found at Girnar. In essence, the Girnar rock carries the edicts known today as REs 1–14 but the Dhauli rock omits REs 11–13 and compensates by adding two REs of its own, known today as the Separate Rock Edicts (SREs 1 and 2). Markham Kittoe’s two versions of the Dhauli REs also showed that what Prinsep had taken to be his errors of copying were actually differences in language between the western and eastern edicts, pointing to regional dialects of a common language, Prakrit.

The Girnar and Dhauli REs were presented in the same style and shared the same royal author as Firoz Shah’s Lat and
other PEs from the Gangetic plains to the north, but they were different both in content and in the time of their making.

The Firoz Shah Lat and the other Pillar Edicts had declared themselves to have been written twenty-six years after Ashoka’s consecration, whereas the third of the Girnar and Dhauli Rock Edicts began: ‘Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, speaks thus. Twelve years after my coronation this has been ordered.’
²⁰
In other words, the Rock Edicts had been cut fourteen years before the Pillar Edicts.

What also became clear to Prinsep as he worked on his translation of this second set of edicts was that the Girnar and Dhauli edicts were significantly less sophisticated than the Pillar Edicts. Indeed, they appeared disorganised, even haphazard, as if they had been dictated off the cuff, with frequent repetitions and asides, seemingly the thoughts of a monarch used to despotic rule, his mind filled with conflicting notions about the nature of the Dharma he had committed himself to implementing and how best he should go about it. This confusion made Prinsep’s work of translation doubly difficult.

RE 1 began simply enough: ‘Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, has caused this Dharma edict to be written.’ It went on to order a ban on the taking of all forms of life and on festivals involving animal sacrifice. It also threw some surprising light on Ashoka’s own culinary tastes and his seeming reluctance to give up his favourite meats (in Venerable Shravasti Dhammika’s modern translation here and below):

Here in my domain no living beings are to be slaughtered or offered in sacrifice. Nor should festivals be held, for Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, sees much to object to in such festivals, although there are some festivals that
Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, does approve of. Formerly, in the kitchen of Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, hundreds of thousands of animals were killed every day to make curry. But now with the writing of this Dharma edict only three creatures, two peacocks and a deer, are killed, and the deer not always. And in time, not even these three creatures will be killed.
²¹

Respect for all living things was a feature of several of the edicts that followed. RE 2 talked about medical aid being provided for both human and animals, as well as wells dug and trees planted beside roads for their benefit. RE 3 called on the king’s subjects to respect their parents, show generosity to others and live with moderation. Some edicts were distinctly personal in tone, even to the point of eccentricity, such as RE 6, which ordered that its author was to be kept fully informed at all times:

In the past, state business was not transacted nor were reports delivered to the king at all hours. But now I have given this order, that at any time, whether I am eating, in the women’s quarters, the bed chamber, the chariot, the palanquin, in the park or wherever, reporters are to be posted with instructions to report to me the affairs of the people so that I might attend to these affairs wherever I am … Truly, I consider the welfare of all to be my duty, and the root of this is exertion and the prompt despatch of business.

Yet the central focus of the edicts was always the practice of Dharma, defined in RE 11 in practical rather than spiritual terms:

There is no gift like the gift of the Dharma, no acquaintance like acquaintance with Dharma, no distribution like distribution of Dharma, and no kinship like kinship through Dharma. It consists of this: proper behaviour towards servants and employees, respect for mother and father, generosity to friends, companions, relations, Brahmans and ascetics, and not killing living beings. Therefore a father, a son, a brother, a master, a friend, a companion or a neighbour should say: ‘This is good, this should be done.’ One benefits in this world and gains great merit in the next by giving the gift of the Dharma.

Ashoka himself was promoting the practice of Dharma throughout his realms and beyond, following religious instruction he had received in the tenth year after his consecration. This was the subject of RE 8: ‘In the past kings used to go out on pleasure tours during which there was hunting and other entertainment. But ten years after Beloved-of-the-Gods had been coronated, he went on a tour to Sambodhi and thus instituted Dharma tours.’ The Sanskrit term
Sambodhi
means ‘proceeding towards enlightenment’, which could mean either that Ashoka went to the place of Sakyamuni Buddha’s Enlightenment, which was Bodhgaya and its Bodhi-tree, or that he received Buddhist teaching. Either way, it was explicit confirmation that Ashoka had received some form of Buddhist instruction.

To assist the spreading of the Dharma, Ashoka had created a special class of religious officers known as
Dharma Mahamatras
, as explained in RE 5. They had been created thirteen years after his consecration to promote the Dharma not only within his borders but also among his neighbours, for ‘They
work among the Greeks, the Kambojas, the Gandharas, the Rastikas, the Pitinikas, and other people on the western borders.’

These religious officers also worked among all religions. This toleration was the subject of RE 7 – the briefest of all the edicts: ‘Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, desires that all religions should reside everywhere, for all of them desire self-control and purity of heart. But people have various desires and various passions, and they may practise all of what they should or only a part of it.’ This principle of freedom of religious expression was also the subject of RE 12 (at Girnar), which encouraged all forms of religious activity. ‘One should listen to and respect the doctrines professed by others,’ this edict reads in part. It continues (modern translation): ‘Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, desires that all should be well-learned in the good doctrines of other religions. Those who are content with their own religion should be told this: Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, does not value gifts and honours as much as he values that there should be growth in the essentials of all religions.’

The final edict, RE 14, explained how and in what form Ashoka’s Rock Edicts had been written. Prinsep describes it as ‘a kind of summing up of the foregoing. We learn from this edict that the whole was engraved at one time from an authentic copy, issued, doubtless, under the royal mandate, by a scribe and pandit of a name not very easily deciphered. It is somewhat curious to find the same words precisely on the rock in Catak [Dhauli].’
²²
RE 14 also gave notice to Prinsep and his fellow Orientalists in India that many more edicts were waiting to be found (modern translation):

Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, has had these Dharma edicts written in brief, in medium length, and in extended form. Not all of them occur everywhere, for my domain is vast, but much has been written, and I will have still more written. And also there are some subjects here that have been spoken of again and again because of their sweetness, and so that the people may act in accordance with them. If some things written are incomplete, this is because of the locality, or in consideration of the object, or due to the fault of the scribe.

But this was not all. For Prinsep, the greatest cause for excitement after the discovery of the true identity of Piyadasi was to be found in the extra nuggets of historical detail tucked away in RE 2 and RE 13 (Girnar).

RE 2 concerned itself chiefly with medical provisions made by King Piyadasi, apparently extending beyond his borders into the territories of his immediate neighbour to the west. ‘Everywhere within the conquered provinces of raja Piyadasi,’ was how Prinsep translated its opening sentences, ‘as well as the parts occupied by the faithful, such as Chola, Pida, Satiyaputra and Keralaputra, even as far as Tambapanni – and moreover within the dominions of Antiochus the Greek, of which Antiochus’ generals are the rulers – everywhere the heaven-beloved raja Piyadasi’s double system of medical aid is established.’
²³