Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor

by Charles R. Allen

  Scenes of the worship of the Bodhi tree and Diamond Throne, stupas, and the Dharma, in the form of the chakra wheel. Here all three are shown in a composite photograph of the front and sides of the same pillar, which Cunningham named the Prasenajit pillar, since these scenes appeared to show King Prasenajit worshipping at these three sites. (Cunningham, The Stupa of Bharhut, 1879)

  The Bodhi tree was shown sometimes within its protective pavilion and wall but also unadorned, and not only the Bodhi tree, for all forms of trees were well represented, suggesting to Cunningham that Buddhism in the Bharhut region had been allied with some from of tree-worshipping cult, just as at Amaravati the Naga snake cult appeared to be a major element.

  All these sculptures were brought into the light of day in the presence of large crowds drawn from the surrounding area. ‘The curious sculptures were a source of much wonder,’ commented Cunningham, ‘a wonder that grew all the greater when it became known that the lat sahib [lord sahib] could read the writing that accompanied the carvings.’ With every fresh discovery he was asked to say what was the subject of the writing, and was always met with disappointment when he announced the name of a donor or guardian deity: ‘Their only idea of such excavations is that they are really intended as a search for hidden treasure.’

  As at Sanchi, numerous short donor inscriptions in Brahmi had been appended to the sculptures but there were also inscriptions that were in effect captions, giving the subject of the illustration. The Brahmi script employed exactly the same form as on Ashoka’s edicts, but nowhere was the name of Ashoka or Piyadasi to be found.

  The excavators broke off in April when it became too hot to continue work and resumed again in November, when enough fragments were recovered to reconstruct much of the East Gateway. Cunningham also took the opportunity to tour the surrounding country and was rewarded by the discovery of two more railing pillars and two bas-reliefs, one ‘the missing half of a well-known Jataka tale’, which had been ‘degraded to the ignoble position of a washerman’s plank’. A third visit to the Bharhut excavation site in January 1875 produced a pillar from one of the two missing gateways. Cunningham then took the decision to move everything so far recovered from Bharhut six hundred miles to the Indian Museum in Calcutta – an act that some of his contemporaries in England condemned as having ‘an aroma of vandalism’ and likened to moving Stonehenge from Wiltshire to London. But Cunningham was adamant that he had done the right thing. ‘I am willing to accept the aroma’, he wrote, ‘since I have saved all the more important sculptures. Of those that were left behind at Bharhut every stone that was removable has since been “carted away” by the people.’14

  When General Sir Alexander Cunningham came to write up his report on Bharhut he had no doubts as to the extreme antiquity of the stupa’s railing and gateways: ‘The absolute identity of the forms of the Bharhut characters with those of the Aoka period is proof sufficient that they belong to the same age.’ This was not a judgement based on pure sentiment. A few years earlier Cunningham had examined a hoard of silver coins found in a field near the Jwalamukhi temple in Kangra in the Western Himalayas. It had included some thirty coins of Apollodotus Soter, ruler of an Indo-Greek kingdom that stretched from Taxila to (modern) Gujarat, his rule extending from about 175 BCE to 160 BCE. These appeared freshly minted, suggesting that they had been buried in the early part of that reign. However, the greater part of the hoard was made up of Indian coins, including those of a king named Amogha-buti, whose dating was known to be mid-second century BCE. The Brahmi lettering on all these Indian coins showed a number of modifications from the Brahmi used in Ashoka’s time, suggesting that these had been introduced not earlier than 175 BCE.

  Cunningham’s judgement had also been swayed by his reading of the most important of the site’s many inscriptions, carved prominently on one a pillar of the Bharhut stupa’s East Gateway. With the help of the Calcutta Sanksritist Babu Rajendra Lal Mitra, Cunningham read this inscription as: ‘In the kingdom of Sugana this toran, with its ornamental stonework and plinth, was caused to be made by King Dhana-bhuti, son of Vacchi and Aga Raja son of Goti, and grandson of Visa Deva son of Gagi’. Both Cunningham and Mitra took the word suganam to be a reference to the minor kingdom of Srughna, a feudatory of the greater Mauryan empire. In addition, some of the other names matched those Cunningham had earlier found on a Buddhist railing at Mathura. It led him to declare that the Bharhut gateways and railings had been erected between 240 and 210 BCE – in other words, in the last years of Ashoka’s reign and just after.

  The general consensus today is that the word suganam in the gateway inscription refers to the Shungas, the dynasty established some fifty years after Ashoka’s death when the last Mauryan ruler was assassinated by his commander-in-chief, Pushyamitra Shunga. The original brick stupa at Bharhut was indeed raised in Ashoka’s time, as at Sanchi and elsewhere, but the surrounding railings and gateways probably went up no earlier than 180 BCE – though there are diehards who still argue that Cunningham was right to subtitle his publication on the Bharhut stupa A Buddhist Monument ornamented with numerous Sculptures illustrative of Buddhist Legend and History of the Third Century B.C.

  What Cunningham might have asked himself was why, if the Bharhut stupa had been built at or so soon after Ashoka’s time, there were no Ashokan memorials here – no Ashokan pillar and no images of Ashoka? The probable answer is that there were very good political reasons why Dharmashoka should not be directly represented at Bharhut, for the ruling dynasty in power when the gateways and colonnade were built were the Shungas, and the founding father of that dynasty was Pushyamitra Shunga, the general who had killed the last of the Mauryas and embarked on a round of anti-Buddhist destruction.

  And yet there may very well be an act of homage to Ashoka at Bharhut – in the person of the carved figure that Cunningham describes simply as ‘one royal relic bearer on an elephant’. He can be seen astride his elephant in a prominent position on the front of a railing post beside one of the pillars of the East Gateway, flanked by two outsiders on smaller elephants and escorted by two standard bearers on horseback (see p. 251 and also p. 362). He clutches a relic casket tightly to his chest.

  The Bharhut sculptures, along with those at Sanchi and Amaravati, are very much part of Ashoka’s legacy, in that they grew out of what Ashoka started. They also provide us with the best images we are ever likely to see of how people lived and worshipped as Buddhists in the Ashokan and post-Ashokan era.

  13

  Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum

  The inscribed central portion of the elephantine Girnar rock, beside the path leading to the top of Girnar Hill, by D. H. Sykes in 1869. (APAC, British Library)

  Jaugada is not an easy place to find. A two-hour drive south from Bhubaneshwar on the coastal road brings you to Ganjam and the mouth of the Rushikulya River. There you turn inland and follow the river’s twists and turns as far as Purushottampur village. Nobody here has heard of Jaugada. But continue to follow the river and just where it seems you have no option but to cross it on a narrow bridge, a narrow track plunges off the road and leads to Pandia hamlet. Here they know exactly what you want and are eager to show you the way. The track ends at the foot of the piled-up rocks of Jaugada hill. Now it becomes a case of scouting for the most likely boulder – and there it is – looming elephant-like against the skyline, its lower flank covered by a hideous construction of concrete and iron bars, like a zoo cage.

  What is today known as the Jaugada Rock Edict had first been reported by Captain Markham Kittoe back in the mid-1830s. He had written to James Prinsep of reports of ‘an inscription covering 270 square feet’1 but had failed to find it. A quarter of a century passed before Kittoe’s inscription was tracked down to Jaugada hill, in what was then part of the Madras Presidency and is now in south Orissa. The rediscoverer was most probably the Madras civil servant Walter Elliot, who afterwards kept very quiet about it and with good reason.

  Elliot is best remembered today a
s the man who ‘saved’ the Amaravati marbles. He entered the Madras Civil Service in 1820 and passed most of his career in the Madras Presidency, where an early interest in hunting soon gave way to more serious pursuits that included zoology, Indian languages and ancient remains. In 1845 Elliot took over the Guntur Division south of the Krishna River, where he found himself responsible for the ruins of the Great Stupa at Amaravati. This had suffered further depredations since Colonel Colin Mackenzie’s day. Many of the carved slabs drawn by Mackenzie’s draughtsmen had been lost to the lime-pit and the Collector of Masulipatam had removed a further thirty-three slabs to decorate his new town square. Elliot’s account of his own excavation of the Amaravati stupa site was subsequently lost at sea but not the marbles he despatched to Madras. In 1859 121 pieces of ‘Elliot’s marbles’ were shipped to London, where they lay forgotten in an old coachhouse before being tracked down by the architectural historian James Fergusson.

  Walter Elliot has to be the prime suspect in the defacing of the Jaugada Rock Edict. In the early 1850s he visited the site in the company of another Madras civil servant twenty years his junior. The rock was at that time said to be ‘more perfect’ than it was found to be later. In 1854 Elliot left the area and it then became known that a European gentleman and a civilian – the noun used at that time to describe a member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) – had visited the Jaugada rock and had tried to prise off its inscription, with disastrous results. According to the local villagers, he ‘threw a quantity of hot tamarind juice and water on the rock, and then beat it with hammers, the result being that he broke off a large portion of rock on which the inscription was carved’.2

  The first five edicts of the Jaugada Rock Edict showing some of the damage inflicted by a ‘European gentleman’. (From Alexander Cunningham, Inscriptions of Aoka, 1877)

  Not surprisingly, the vandal remained silent, so that it was not until 1872 that the Jaugada Rock Edict was officially reported on, by a district officer named W. F. Grahame. By the time Grahame’s report appeared in the first issue of the Indian Antiquary, Sir Walter Elliot, KCIE, had retired from India and had become a leading member of the Royal Asiatic Society. The question of the identity of the Jaugada ‘civilian’ was not pursued.

  The Jaugada inscription proved to be another of Emperor Ashoka’s major Rock Edict sites, the fifth so far discovered after Girnar, Dhauli, Shahbazgarhi and Kalsi. In common with the other edict rocks, it had been inscribed with REs 1–10 and 14. However, REs 11–13 had been replaced by two other edicts: the so-called Separate Rock Edicts (SREs 1 and 2). These had been set apart from the main edicts in two boxes and were relatively undamaged.

  This was precisely what James Prinsep had found on the Dhauli Rock Edict outside Bhubaneshwar, and its discovery helped to explain why it was that REs 11–13 had been omitted both here and at the Dhauli rock, for both these sites lay within the boundaries of ancient Kalinga, one in the north, the other in the south. The three missing Rock Edicts were those in which Emperor Ashoka had described his conquest of Kalinga and his subsequent remorse at the suffering he had caused. In Kalinga itself those remarks had been deliberately omitted, presumably to spare the feelings of the already traumatised people of Kalinga.

  The two SREs that had replaced REs 11–13 at Jaugada and Dhauli are addressed to Ashoka’s mahamatras or special religious officers at Tosali (Dhauli) and Samapa (Jaugada). They are directed to carry out the emperor’s instructions regarding the spiritual welfare of the people under their care and to do so justly and impartially, so that the people of Kalinga might live at peace with one another. It was in this context that Emperor Ashoka had set out what is perhaps his most famous doctrine, in which he declares that he rules for the happiness of all his subjects (modern translation): ‘All men are my children. What I desire for my own children, and I desire their welfare and happiness both in this world and the next, that I desire for all men. You do not understand to what extent I desire this, and if some of you do understand, you do not understand the full extent of my desire.’3

  SRE 2 continues in the same vein but it, too, carries a quite remarkable message, intended for ‘the people of the unconquered territories’. If they are wondering what the king’s intentions are towards them, Ashoka’s answer is this (modern translation):

  My only intention is that they live without fear of me, that they may trust me and that I may give them happiness, not sorrow. Furthermore, they should understand that the king will forgive those who can be forgiven, and that he wishes them to practise Dharma so that they can attain happiness in this world and the next. I am telling you this so that I may discharge the debts I owe, and that in instructing you, you may know that my vow and my promise will not be broken … Assure them [the people of the unconquered territories] that: ‘The king is like a father. He feels towards us as he feels towards himself. We are to him like his own children.’

  This message was for the peoples who lived south and west of Kalinga, whose territories had yet to be conquered by Ashoka. They had seen the terrible fate that had befallen Kalinga when it had resisted Ashoka’s armies. Now the emperor wanted them to understand that he was a changed man who wished to conquer by force of Dharma alone.

  In the event, Ashoka never did conquer the southern tip of India, any more than he conquered the island of Lanka beyond. He had no need to for, as the Great Dynastic Chronicle tells us, he achieved his aims by peaceful means with the spread of the Dharma.

  With the discovery of the fifth edict rock a distinct pattern began to emerge. All five had been cut into the outer flank of a prominent – and elephantine – boulder set on a hillside overlooking a human settlement. Both at Jaugada and at Dhauli the edict rocks look down upon the remains of walled cities. At Dhauli the ancient city of Tosali is on the far side of the nearby River Daya, the ‘River of Compassion’, but its monumental mud and brick walls and outer moat are still strikingly visible. At Jaugada the hill actually merges into a corner of the walls of Samapa so as to form a sort of acropolis, as in a Greek city. Here the earthworks are less impressive but what is still visible to the naked eye is that the original town of Samapa had been laid out in a square on a north–south grid, with two gates on each side – again, very much on the Greek model. From its size and location, it must at one time have been an important administrative centre for the southern half of ancient Kalinga, with its close proximity to the river and the sea coast making it well placed to engage in trade inland and up and down the coast.

  Walter Elliot carried out a cursory dig here at Jaugada in 1858 and unearthed a collection of Kushan coins dating from the first century CE. A more thorough excavation would be carried out in 1956–7 by Mrs Debala Mitra of the Archaeological Survey of India. She would show that Samapa had been founded during the reign of Ashoka in the third century CE. Punch-marked coins of the Mauryan era and a range of working and decorative materials pointed to a flourishing and prosperous community.4 That same pattern is found at Tosali, so that both appear to have been new towns founded immediately after the conquest of Kalinga as new administrative centres of Ashoka’s empire.

  The Sanskritist who first examined and wrote about the Jaugada Rock Edict was an Indian: the scholar and social reformer Dr Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar,5 at this time assistant lecturer in Sanskrit at Bombay University, which by now had become the centre of Indian studies in India.

  West-coast Bombay had eclipsed Calcutta – and if General Sir Alexander Cunningham was to be believed, this was because the Asiatic Society of Bengal had been taken over by what he called ‘the Naturalists, who then monopolised the direction of the Museum’, so much so that when he visited its museum to re-examine a Buddhist statue excavated by him at Sravasti he found it tucked away ‘in the midst of a herd of stuffed deer and antelopes, [which] completely hid its inscribed pedestal from view’.6 However, the real factor in Bombay’s rise to prominence was that it was less hidebound by race and caste on both sides and it had profited from a succession of enlighten
ed governors – among them the Orientalist Jonathan Duncan, who had died in office in Bombay in 1811 – who recognised the need to bring Indians on board.

  The enterprise that had characterised Calcutta in its early days had now become Bombay’s hallmark, which in the academic field found expression in the rise to prominence of Elphinstone College. It became the nucleus of Bombay University in 1860 and within a decade its Department of Oriental Studies had become a beacon of scholarship, largely thanks to the presence of Professor Georg Bühler, under whose aegis Indian epigraphy was transformed from a hobby into a discipline. Sanskrit – and in due course Pali – became a respectable subject to study at university and a new breed of college-educated Sanskritists began to appear who were no longer content to serve merely as pandits to Europeans.

  A third golden age of Indology now began in which Indian scholars were able to participate on an equal footing not only with foreign-born epigraphists working in India, such as Dr Bühler and Dr John Fleet of the ICS, but with their counterparts in Europe. In Bombay the first local graduate to make his mark was Professor Bühler’s protégé, the Maharashtran Brahmin Ramakrishna Bhandarkar, born in the annus mirabilis of 1837. When Bühler took on a more senior post in 1868 it was Dr Bhandarkar who took over his chair as Professor of Sanskrit – only to be passed over four years later when the position was given to a twenty-five-year-old Oxford scholar, Dr Peter Peterson. Despite the protests of Bühler and others, the authorities refused to back down, so Bhandarkar had no option but to serve as Peterson’s assistant – a humiliation compounded by Peterson’s insistence on sharing the credit for what Bhandarkar saw as his greatest achievement: his collection and editing of scores of previously unknown Sanskrit and Pali manuscripts. When it became clear that Peterson was staying put, a special post was created for Bhandarkar as Professor of Sanskrit at the Deccan College in Poona, which Dr Bhandarkar lived to see develop into the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, formally opened by the Viceroy in 1917, by which time Dr Bhandarkar had himself been awarded a knighthood.