Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor
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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
The Cholas and Pandyas (Pida) were South Indian tribes, the Satiyaputras and Keralaputras were from India’s southwestern seaboard, and Tambapanni was Taproban, the ancient name for Ceylon. But then came the phrase antiyoke name yona lajaya, which Prinsep read as ‘Antiochus the Greek King’. His immediate assumption was that this was a reference to the Graeco-Persian Antiochos Soter, son of the man who had taken on Ashoka’s grandfather Chandragupta and lost. Antiochos had succeeded his father Seleukos the Victor after his assassination in 281 BCE and had presided over an ever shrinking empire until his own death in 261 BCE.
However, the most astonishing revelation was to be found in the last of the Girnar interpolations, RE 13. It told of King Ashoka’s brutal conquest of the country of Kalinga in the eighth year after his consecration. The name Kalinga was familiar to Prinsep, from the fragments of Megasthenes’ India. It was an ancient kingdom in central-eastern India known in Prinsep’s time as the province of Orissa, under the authority of the Bengal Presidency. Megasthenes had written that at the time of Chandragupta, Kalinga’s capital was Parthalis, defended by an army of sixty thousand foot-soldiers, seven hundred war elephants and one thousand horsemen. According to the Girnar rock, those forces had proved no match for Ashoka’s army which, by his own admission, had followed his orders in showing no mercy. So much suffering had ensued in his conquest of Kalinga that Ashoka had been overcome by remorse and, so the Rock Edict implied, had become a convert to Buddhism. RE 13 set this all out in quite remarkable detail. It began (for the full edict in modern translation see Appendix, p. 413):
Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, conquered the Kalingas eight years after his coronation. One hundred and fifty thousand were deported, one hundred thousand were killed and many more died from other causes. After the Kalingas had been conquered, Beloved-of-the-Gods came to feel a strong inclination towards the Dharma, a love for the Dharma and for instruction in Dharma. Now Beloved-of-the-Gods feels deep remorse for having conquered the Kalingas …24
It was now clear why that particular edict was missing from the Dhauli rock in Orissa. It had been omitted to spare the feelings of the conquered people of Kalinga. It also helped to explain why the river that flowed past the Dhauli rock was known as the River of Compassion, Daya.
RE 13 closed with a call for Ashoka’s descendants to follow his example and to continue to rule by non-violence:
Truly, Beloved-of-the-Gods desires non-injury, restraint and impartiality to all beings, even where wrong has been done. Now it is conquest by Dharma that Beloved-of-the-Gods considers to be the best conquest … I have had this Dharma edict written so that my sons and great-grandsons may not consider making new conquests, or that if military conquests are made, that they be done with forbearance and light punishment, or better still, that they consider making conquest by Dharma only, for that bears fruit in this world and the next.
In the middle section of that same RE 13 were still more revelations – except that since Tod’s visit in 1823 the Girnar rock had suffered severe damage to one corner after a pious Jain had used gunpowder to widen the pilgrim trail leading up Girnar’s sacred mountain. The explosion had blown off a corner of the rock at the point where the left-hand section of RE 13 had been cut, leaving just enough for Prinsep to make out that it listed seven kingdoms within the Indian subcontinent where King Ashoka’s conquest by Dharma had been achieved as well as other kingdoms beyond Ashoka’s western borders influenced by his Dharma, even as far as ‘six hundred yojanas’, or approximately three thousand miles! The names of five foreign monarchs had originally been inscribed, of which only two were now decipherable: ‘Antiochus the ally of Asoka’ (already mentioned in RE 1) and ‘one of the Ptolemies of Egypt’.
The loss of the remaining three names was deeply frustrating. Even so, the names of Antiochos and Ptolemy allowed Prinsep to speculate as to when the Girnar edicts might have been written, for both must have been ruling at that time. The first he had taken to be Antiochos Soter, son of Seleukos the Victor (281–261 BCE), so it followed that the rule of the king named Ptolemy had to fall within his dates. Ptolemy, founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty of kings of Egypt, had declared himself ruler in 305 BCE. However, this first Ptolemy had died in 285 or 283 BCE – at least two years before Antiochos had succeeded his father in 281 BCE – so the Ptolemy in question had to be Ptolemy II Philadelphos, who had ruled Egypt from 285/283 to 246 BCE. Since Ptolemy II was ruling in Egypt when Antiochos became king in 281 BCE and was still on the throne when the latter died in 261 BCE, it followed that RE 13 must have been inscribed somewhere between those two dates: 281 BCE and 261 BCE. And since the Girnar Rock Edict declared itself to have been cut twelve years after Ashoka’s consecration, it further followed that he must have been anointed king of Magadha at some point between 293 and 273 BCE.
This window challenged the dating established by Sir William Jones in 1789, which had placed the year of Chandragupta’s accession in 317 BCE or soon after. Chandragupta had ruled for twenty-four years before being succeeded by his son Bindusara, who ruled for twenty-five years before being followed by Ashoka. That had given a provisional dating for Ashoka’s consecration as king as the year 266 BCE – which fell outside Prinsep’s window by six years.
What Prinsep had failed to take into account was that Ptolemy II had been followed by Ptolemy III – and Antiochos Soter by his son of the same name, Antiochos II. It would take another generation and the discovery of more complete Rock Edicts before the names of the three missing allies of Ashoka would be determined – and with them more exact dating.
This was a rare error among many advances. By the early spring of 1838 Prinsep’s work on the Pillar and Rock Edicts had established a rough chronology of events in the rule of King Ashoka: in the eighth year after his consecration he had waged war on Kalinga, effecting such destruction that he had been overcome by remorse and had turned to the Dharma (RE 13); in his tenth year Ashoka had gone on a tour of the holy places of Dharma, which had included ‘visits and gifts to Brahmans and ascetics, visits and gift of gold to the aged, visits to people in the countryside, instructing them in the Dharma, and discussing Dharma with them as
suitable’ (RE 8); in his twelfth year Ashoka had started to have Dharma edicts written in various forms ‘for the welfare and happiness of the people, and so that not transgressing them they might grow in the Dharma’ (PE 6); in his twelfth and thirteenth years Ashoka had set up a missionary organisation staffed by a new cadre of religious officers for the spreading of the Dharma through his kingdom and beyond (REs 3, 5); and in his twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh years Ashoka had brought out further edicts that were inscribed on pillars rather than rocks (PEs 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7).
Prinsep’s translations had also showed that the Rock and Pillar Edicts were unequivocally the work of one omnipotent ruler, Ashoka Maurya, known to his subjects as Piyadasi, Beloved-of-the-Gods. Those edicts had been inscribed in terms that were personal and idiosyncratic, repetitious and heavy-handed, but unquestionably heartfelt. They showed Ashoka to be a man of paradoxes: highly intelligent, self-confident, comfortable in the exercise of power, and believing himself divinely appointed to rule as the father of his people. They also revealed him to be deeply – even obsessively – spiritual, passionate in his belief in a higher morality, in showing kindness and helping the poor, in moderation and self-control, in tolerance for all religions, in the sanctity of life, in the virtues of self-examination, truthfulness, purity of heart and, above all, in his love of the Dharma. In sum, the edicts were the work of a ruler like no other – and a revolutionary one at that. ‘Conquest by Dharma alone’; for an all-powerful monarch to express such pacific sentiments and make them the central pillar of his rule was without parallel, utterly at odds with the duties of kingship as laid down in the Vedas and other texts. And no less revolutionary was Ashoka’s call for religious tolerance and his ban on animal sacrifice, for the first undermined the authority of the Brahman priesthood and the second struck at the heart of the cult of blood sacrifice that was a central feature of Brahmanistic religious practice at this time.
Ashokan studies came into existence in the annus mirabilis of 1837 – and continued to flourish mightily until the autumn of the following year. But in September 1838 James Prinsep was struck down by paralysing headaches brought on by an inflammation of the brain. It soon extended to the loss of his mental faculties, leading to his removal to England as a helpless, speechless invalid, and his death in London seven months later at the age of forty-one.
This poor quality etching of James Prinsep shows him already in the grip of the illness that would kill him four months later. (Colesworthy Grant, Lithographic Sketches, 1850)
Unaware that Prinsep was dying, George Turnour wrote to him on 18 October 1838 enclosing another article for the JRAS on the Great Dynastic Chronicle and explaining that this would be his last contribution: ‘In a few days I leave Kandy for Colombo. The duties of my new office, and my separation from the Buddhist pandits, and the libraries of this place, will prevent, for some time at least, the further prosecution of this examination.’25
For Turnour, too, the separation was final. His health destroyed by malaria, he took early retirement and died an invalid in Italy in 1843 at the age of forty-three.
9
Brian Hodgson’s Gift
‘Ashoka’s temple – called Chillundeo – in the centre of Patun’. The central stupa of five said to have been built by Emperor Ashoka in and around the town of Patan in Kathmandu Valley. A water-colour by Dr Henry Oldfield, surgeon at the British Residency, Kathmandu, from 1850 to 1863. (APAC, British Library)
One of the best places in the Eastern Himalayas to view the snows of Kanchenjunga is from Observatory Hill above the town of Darjeeling. When the British authorities in Calcutta decided on Darjeeling as an ideal retreat from the summer heat, they first settled on Observatory Hill’s Jalapahar ridge, known as the ‘Burning Hill’ on account of the rhododendrons that burst into red flower in the spring. The first European-style cottages were built here, among them a house and grounds that for almost a century and a half have been occupied by one of India’s oldest public schools, St Paul’s.
The school moved here from Calcutta in 1864 after some seventy-five acres had been purchased from the owner, whose house became the home of the school’s principal. Today known as the ‘Rectory’, it may well be the oldest surviving building in Darjeeling. It was originally named ‘Brianstone’ and until 1858 was the home of Brian Houghton Hodgson.
Of the three English pioneer Indologists born at the turn of the century – James Prinsep, George Turnour and Brian Hodgson – the survivor was the one whose health had always seemed the most precarious. Houghton lived to the age of ninety-four, being described in his late sixties as ‘a tall slender aristocratic man, with an air of distinction even in his moustaches, a great hunting man and hence an early riser’1 – but also as a sad man, with a strong sense of grievance about the way his labours had been ‘plagiarised and ignored’.2
Following Britain’s disastrous adventure into Afghanistan in the form of the First Afghan War of 1838–41 the lightweight Lord Auckland was replaced as Governor General of India by Lord Ellenborough. Knowing how Auckland had allowed his judgement to be swayed by headstrong politicals, Ellenborough was determined to bring them to heel. To this end, he ordered Brian Houghton Hodgson, still British Resident in Kathmandu, to cease meddling in Nepal’s internal affairs. After more than two decades’ residence in Nepal, Hodgson had every reason to regard himself as a major influence for good at the Nepalese court. Time and again he had intervened or intrigued to foil a militant faction in Nepal intent on provoking a second war against the EICo. He now made what his biographer, Sir William Hunter, described as ‘a somewhat needlessly emphatic protest against a piece of unfairness in high places’. His punishment was to be offered a junior post as assistant commissioner at the fledgling hill-station of Simla. He promptly resigned and sailed to England with all his papers – stopping off briefly in France to meet Eugène Burnouf and donate more manuscripts to the Collège de France.
But Hodgson’s long romance with Asia was not yet over. Unable to settle ‘at home’, after less than a year he returned to India, with a young wife, to continue his researches. Forbidden to re-enter Nepal, he found the next best thing to Kathmandu at the sanatorium of Darjeeling. Here he settled down in the estate he named ‘Brianstone’, now concentrating his efforts on ethnology, until the declining health of his wife finally persuaded him to quit India for good in 1858. Despite his immense contribution to Indian studies, zoology, botany and other sciences, Hodgson never received any public recognition from his own government, and it was not until 1889 that he was belatedly awarded an honorary doctorate from Oxford. Despite his donations of hundreds of Sanskrit manuscripts and thousands of drawings to the EICo’s Library, the Bodleian Library, the Royal Asiatic Society, the Natural History Museum, the Zoological Society, the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and other learned bodies in Britain, it seems his countrymen never forgave Hodgson for his gifts to French scholarship and his acceptance of the Légion d’Honneur.
Brian Houghton Hodgson some years after he returned to England in 1858. A portrait painted by Louis Starr-Canziani at an unknown date, possibly showing Houghton in his old Indian Political Service uniform – but without the button of his Legion d’Honneur. (National Portrait Gallery)
Eugène Burnouf’s Le Lotus de la Bonne Loi, published posthumously in 1852, was dedicated to Hodgson as ‘founder of the study of Buddhism’, and with good reason. Burnouf showed that there were two traditions and chronologies within the Buddhist world: a Northern Mahayana, or ‘Great Vehicle’, tradition recorded chiefly in Sanskrit and a Southern Theravada, or ‘Vehicle of the Elders’, tradition set down in Pali. Within the Northern tradition there were conflicting dates regarding the dating of the ‘Great Final Extinguishing’ of Sakyamuni Buddha, ranging from 949 BCE (China, Japan and Korea) to 881 BCE (Tibet and Nepal), with Ashoka anointed ruler a century after his death. Within the Southern tradition (chiefly Ceylon, Siam and Burma) there was no such disagreement, it being agreed that Sakyamuni’s death had occurred
in the year 544 BCE and that Ashoka Maurya had been anointed as ruler 218 years after that death, thus 326 BCE. Burnouf argued that even this date was too early and a consensus was gradually reached among Indologists that Sakyamuni Buddha had probably died in about 486 BCE and that Ashoka had begun his rule not 218 years later but 118 years, so about 268 BCE.
Thanks to Hodgson, Burnouf was also the first Westerner to have access to a Sanskrit text known as the Divyavadana, or ‘Divine Stories’, made up of thirty-eight avadanas, or morality tales, about the lives of Buddhist saints. One of these was the Ashokavadana, or ‘Legend of King Ashoka’, being an account of the life and death of Emperor Ashoka set out in almost ten thousand verses.
Hitherto the Western world’s nascent understanding of Ashoka and his times had come from two main sources: the Ashokan Rock and Pillar Edicts, and George Turnour’s translation of the Great Dynastic Chronicle – the latter representing Buddhist history as interpreted within the Southern tradition. The Theravadin compilers of the Great Dynastic Chronicle had made much of Ashoka as patron and propagator of Buddhism and as father of two of their local heroes, Mahinda and Sanghamitta. They had also stressed the dominant role of the proto-Theravadin elder Moggaliputta Tissa in guiding Ashoka, sending missionaries to Lanka and elsewhere and managing the Third Buddhist Council.