Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor

by Charles R. Allen

  Once he had understood how the Brahmi alphabet worked, Prinsep applied it – speedily and triumphantly – to the translation of the twenty-three records of donations from the Sanchi stupa and the names of their donors. Next came translations of the lettering on a number of bilingual Indo-Bactrian coins bearing Greek lettering on the obverse and No. 1 on the reverse. A number of short inscriptions from Bodhgaya followed. Only then did Prinsep feel ready to take on the Firoz Shah’s Lat inscription, beginning with the fifteen-character phrase that he had earlier found to begin virtually every paragraph at Delhi, Allahabad, Girnar, Dhauli and elsewhere. ‘The most usual reading,’ he declared, ‘and the equivalent according to my alphabet, are as follows:

  Devanamapiya piyadasi laja hevam aha

  The word laja initially threw both Prinsep and his Pali-speaking Sinhalese assistant Ratna Paula, until they realised that this was ‘the licence of a loose vernacular orthography’ and that the intended word was raja. That gave them the opening phrase: ‘Beloved-of-the-Gods beloved king’. The last two words – hevam aha – translated as ‘spake thus’, which together gave the complete sentence:

  Thus spake King Piyadasi, Beloved-of-the-Gods

  These words, professed Prinsep, had every appearance of a royal edict: ‘The simplicity of the form reminds us of the common expression in our own Scriptures – “Thus spake the prophet”, or in the proclamation of the Persian monarch – “Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia”.’

  Prinsep’s first thoughts were that here were ‘the doctrines of some great reformer, such as Shakya [Sakyamuni Buddha]’. But when he translated the second sentence it immediately became clear that this could only be the work of a monarch, for it began Saddavisati vasa abhisitename – ‘In the twenty-seventh year of my anointment’9 – a phrase that was repeated in another four places of the inscription. Today that sentence is generally read as ‘When I had been consecrated twenty-six years’10 or ‘twenty-six years after my coronation’.11

  Who then, Prinsep asked, could this monarch have been – for he was patently a ruler powerful enough ‘to spread his edicts thus over the continent of India’? So far as Prinsep knew, no Indian ruler before Akbar the Great had ever ruled over such a large area as that covered by the pillar and rock inscriptions. He had gone through all the Hindu genealogical tables and had found no one by the name of Devanamapiya Piyadasi (more accurately, Devanamapriya Priydarsin, the form most often used today in academic circles).

  Only one contender seemed to fit the bill – but a monarch from outside India: ‘In Mr Turnour’s Epitome of Ceylonese History, then, we are presented once, and once only, with the name of a king, Devenampiatissa [sic], as nearly identical with ours as possible.’ George Turnour’s translation of the Great Dynastic Chronicle had described how this King Devanamapiyatissa of Lanka had been converted to Buddhism through the efforts of the Indian king Dharmashoka, who could only be the Mauryan ruler Ashoka. ‘Was [it] possible, then, that this Lankan king was the author of the rock edicts’, that ‘Devanampiyatissa [sic], the royal convert, caused, in his zeal, the dogmas of his newly adopted faith to be promulgated far and wide?’

  James Prinsep presented his complete translation of the Firoz Shah Lat inscription at the next meeting of the ASB, held in early August 1837.12 It was, in his view, ‘a series of edicts connected with the Buddhist faith issued by Divanamapiya Piyadasi [sic], a king of Ceylon’, their purpose being to ‘proclaim his renunciation of his former faith, and his adoption of the Buddhist persuasion’.

  Even though the edicts made no reference to Buddha Sakyamuni, they appeared to be directly associated with Buddhist thinking. The word dharma ran through the inscription like a thread: ‘The sacred name constantly employed – the true keystone of Shakya’s reform – is Dhamma or Dharma.’ This word Prinsep translated – or, rather, mistranslated – as ‘virtue’ or ‘religion’. The promotion of Dharma lay at the heart of these edicts, even though it was quite clear that the real authority lay with the edicts’ author, whose name appeared no less than sixteen times on the Delhi column: ‘The chief drift of the writing seems to enhance the merits of the author – the continual recurrence of esa me kate, “so I have done”, arguing a vaunt of his own acts rather than an inculcation of virtue in others’.

  Prinsep established that the first of seven edicts – known today as Pillar Edicts 1–7 (PE 1–7) inscribed on Firoz Shah’s Lat began on the north side of the column. Here three edicts had been set down within one compartment, each beginning with the solemn fifteen-letter sentence declaration, ‘Thus spake King Piyadasi, Beloved-of-the-Gods’. The fourth edict appeared by itself on the west side of the column, the fifth on the south, the sixth on the east, and the seventh and longest beginning under the east compartment and continuing right round the column.

  ‘Thus spake king Devanamapiya Piyadasi’, begins Prinsep’s historic translation of Pillar Edict 1 (PE 1, here quoted in its entirety):

  In the twenty-seventh year of my anointment, I have caused this religious edict to be published in writing. I acknowledge and confess the faults that have been cherished in my heart. From the love of virtue, by the side of which all other things are but sins – from the strict scrutiny of sin, and from a fervid desire to be told of sin – by the fear of sin and by the very enormity of sin – by these may my eyes be strengthened and confirmed. The sight of religion and the love of religion of their own accord increase and will ever increase: and my people whether of the laity, or of the priesthood – all mortal beings, are knit together thereby, and prescribe to themselves the same path: and above all having obtained the mastery over their passions, they become supremely wise. For this is indeed true wisdom: it is upheld and bound by religion – by religion which cherishes, religion which teaches pious acts, religion which bestows pleasure.

  By today’s standards of epigraphy, this first translation was very wide of the mark. Neither Prinsep nor Ratna Paula could fully grasp the meaning of many sentences, as can be seen when the above is set beside a modern translation (see Appendix, p. 419):

  The second Pillar Edict (PE 2) was easier to translate, although it too was taken up with the meaning of Dharma, here defined by King Piyadasi as the performance of good works that included (in Prinsep’s translation) ‘the non-omission of many acts: mercy and charity, purity and chastity’. To this end, King Piyadasi had himself performed many acts of benevolence ‘towards the poor and afflicted, towards bipeds and quadrupeds, towards the fowls of the air and things that move in the waters’. It closed with an explanation as to why these edicts were being promulgated: ‘Let all pay attention to it, and let it endure for ages to come, and he who acts in conformity thereto, the same shall attain eternal happiness.’

  James Prinsep’s translation of the Pillar Edicts cannot be quoted here in full simply for reasons of space. However, an exception has be made for Prinsep’s rendering of the closing sentences of the last of the seven Pillar Edicts (PE 7), where he came closest to catching the essence of its author’s call for his message to be read by future generations:

  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 Kin
g 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.’