Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor
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5 The ‘passive resistance’ of the Oriya peoples of Orissa that irritated Markham Kittoe in the 1830s so unnerved the Armenian archaeologist Joseph Beglar in the 1870s that he devoted pages of an archaeological report to a denunciation of the Oriyas for their ‘stolid bigotry’ and ‘vengeful disposition’. See J. D. M. Beglar, ‘Report of Tours in the South-Eastern Provinces in 1874–75 and 1875–76’, ASI Report, Vol. XIII, 1882.
6 ‘Son of Drona’, but in this context probably meaning ‘lower mountaintop’.
7 J. Prinsep, ‘Note on the Facsimiles of Inscriptions from Sanchi near Bhilsa, taken by Captain Ed. Smith, and on the Drawings of the Buddhist Monument, presented by Captain W. Murray’, JASB, Vol. VI, 1837.
8 J. Prinsep, ‘The Legends of the Saurashtra Group of Coins Deciphered’, JRAS, VI. 1837.
9 The word that Prinsep translated as ‘anointment’ was abisitena, corresponding to the Sanskrit term abhisheka used to describe the ancient Vedic rite of anointing rulers, corresponding to the Western term ‘coronation’, which in its strictest sense implies the crowning of a monarch. The earliest representations of rulers in India show them wearing ornate turbans but without any auspicious tilak mark on their foreheads, so there is no reason to object to the use of the word ‘coronation’ in this context, as used above and in several other modern renderings of the Ashokan edicts.
10 Romila Thapar, Aoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, 1973.
11 Ven. S. Dhammika, The Edicts of King Asoka, 2009. This translation, which draws on the earlier translations of Amulyachandra Sen, C. D. Sirkar and D. K. Bhandarkar, can be seen in full on http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/dhammika/wheel386.html.
12 James Prinsep, ‘Interpretation of the Most Ancient of the Inscriptions on the Pillar called the Lat of Firuz Shah, near Delhi, and of the Allahabad, Radhia and Mattia Pillar or Lat Inscriptions which agree herewith’, JASB, Vol. VI, 1837.
13 George Turnour’s letter is quoted in James Prinsep, ‘Further Elucidation of the Lat or Silasthambha Inscriptions from Various Sources’, JASB, Vol. VI, 1837.
14 Turnour afterwards wrote again to say that he had since found other texts which confirmed that ‘Piyadaso, Piyadasino or Piyadasi … was the name of Dharmashoka before he usurped the Indian empire; and it is of this monarch that the amplest details are given in the Pali annals.’ See George Turnour, ‘Further Notes on the Inscriptions on the Columns at Delhi, Allahabad, Betiah, etc’, JASB, Vol. VI, 1837.
15 James Prinsep, ‘Facsimiles of Ancient Inscriptions’, JASB, Vol. VI, 1837.
16 James Prinsep, ‘Discovery of the Name of Antiochus the Great, in Two of the Edicts of Asoka King of India’, JASB, Vol. VII, 1838. Although published in the February issue, the discovery had been made late in 1837 following the despatch of Kittoe’s new facsimile of the Dhauli inscription.
17 Markham Kittoe, ‘Mr Kittoe’s Journal of his Tour in the Province of Orissa’, JASB, Vol. VII, 1838.
18 James Prinsep, ‘Discovery of the Name of Antiochus the Great, in Two of the Edicts of Asoka King of India’, JASB, Vol. VII, 1838. Although published in the February issue, the discovery had been made late in 1837 following the despatch of Kittoe’s new facsimile of the Dhauli inscription.
19 James Prinsep, ‘On the Edicts of Piyadasi, or Asoka, the Buddhist Monarch of India, Preserved on the Girnar Rock in the Gujerat Peninsula, and on the Dhauli Rock in Cuttack, with the Discovery of Ptolemy’s Name therein’, JASB, Vol. VII, 1838.
20 Ven. S. Dhammika, The Edicts of King Asoka, 2009.
21 Ibid.
22 Prinsep’s summary is quoted in Alexander Cunningham, Inscriptions of Asoka, 1877.
23 James Prinsep, ‘Discovery of the Name of Antiochus the Great, in Two of the Edicts of Asoka, King of India’, JASB, Vol. VII, 1838.
24 Ven. S. Dhammika, The Edicts of King Asoka, 2009.
25 George Turnour, JASB, Vol. VII, 1838.
Chapter 9. Brian Hodgson’s Gift
1 Undated letter from his biographer W. W. Hunter quoted in David Waterhouse, Ed. The Origins of Himalayan Studies: Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling 1820–1858, 2004.
2 B. H. Hodgson in a letter to W. W. Hunter, dated 1 November 1867, quoted in David Waterhouse, ed. The Origins of Himalayan Studies: Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling 1820–1858, 2004.
3 Except up in India’s north-west borders and beyond where, as James Prinsep had discovered, a local ‘Bactrian’ was spoken and written, better known today as Kharosthi.
4 John S. Strong, The Legend of King Aoka: a Study and Translation of the Aokavadana, 1983.
5 V. P. Vasiliev, Introduction to the Russian translation of Taranatha’s History of Buddhism in India, 1869.
6 The Avadana-Kalpalata and Magadhai-pandita sa-dban-bzan-po, the last being the work of a Pandit Ksemendrabhadra of Magadha.
7 Lama Chimpa and Alaka Chattopadhyaya, Taranatha’s History of Buddhism in India, 1970.
8 There was a dynasty of Candra kings who ruled in Arakan and the eastern fringes of Bengal from about 350 CE to 600 CE. The later Candras were Buddhists with close ties to Lanka, so it is possible that Taranatha heard of them and muddled them up with Ashoka’s family.
9 The full title is Foé Koué Ki, ou Relations des Royaumes Bouddhiques: voyage dans la Tarsarie, dans l’Afghanistan et dans l’Inde, exécuté, à la fin du IVe siècle, par Chy Fa Hian, traduit du chinois et commenté par Abel Rémusat. Ouvrage Posthume. Revu, complété et augmenté d’éclaircissements nouveaux par MM. Klaproth et Landresse, 1836.
10 This was afterwards followed by a more complete translation by Julien of Xuanzang’s travels under the title of Memoires sur les Contrées Occidental, traduits du Sanscrit en Chinois en l’an 648, par Hiouen-tsang, published in two volumes in 1857 and 1858.
Chapter 10. Records of the Western Regions
1 The full story is told in Sun Shuyun, Ten Thousand Miles Without a Cloud, 2004.
2 James Legge, A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms; being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his Travels in India and Ceylon (AD 399–414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline, 1886.
3 For a full account of Ashoka in China see Max Deeg, ‘From the Iron-Wheel to Bodhisattvahood: Aoka in Buddhist Culture and Memory’, Aoka in History and Historical Memory, ed. P. Olivelle, 2009; ‘Mapping Common Territory – Mapping Other Territory’, Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, Vol. VIII, Issue 1, 2007; and ‘Writing for the Emperor: Xuanzang between Pietry, Religious Propaganda, Intelligence, and Modern Imagination’, Indica et Tibetica, Vol. 52, 2009.
4 The vigilant reader will have spotted that I have taken a liberty here. Legge, writing after Ashoka’s identity had become known in the West, speaks of Aoka rather than Wuyou Wang, as do later translators of Xuanzang. But to do so here would be out of context – and it spoils the story!
5 James Legge, A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of Travels in India and Ceylon (AD 399–414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline, 1886.
6 Max Deeg, ‘From the Iron-Wheel to Bodhisattvahood: Aoka in Buddhist Culture and Memory’, Aoka in History and Historical Memory, ed. P. Olivelle, 2009.
7 Xuanzang, Datang Xiguo-ji, The Geat Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions, trans. Li Rongxi, 1996.
8 Again I have taken the liberty of preserving the Chinese original, with apologies to the translator, Li Rongxi.
9 Beginning with Examen critique de quelques pages de Chinois relative à l’Inde, traduites couple MG Pauthier, accompagné de discussions grammaticales sur certain rules de position qui, a Chinois, jouent le même role que les inflexions dans les autres langues, par M. Stanislas Julien, 1841.
10 Alexander Cunningham, ‘An Account of the Discovery of the Ruins of the Buddhist City of Samkassa – by Lieut. Alexander Cunningham of the Bengal Engineers, in a letter to Colonel Sykes’, JRAS, Vol. VII, 1843.
11 Alexander Cunningham, ‘Proposed Archaeological Excavation’, JASB, Vol. XVII, 1848.
12 Markham Kittoe, ‘Note on the Inscription found near Bhabra’, JRAS, Vol. IX, 1840.
13 M. E. Burnouf, Le Lotus de la Bonne Loi, 1852.
14 It was subsequently published in Calcutta in 1848 under the title of The Pilgrimage of Fa Hian.
15 Markham Kittoe in a letter to Cunningham quoted in The Bhilsa Topes, 1853.
Chapter 11. Alexander Cunningham the Great
1 Edwin Norris, ‘On the Kapur-di-Giri Rock Inscription’, JRAS, Vol. VIII, 1846, and Charles Masson, ‘Narrative of an Excursion from Peshawar to Shah-baz-Ghari’, JRAS, Vol. VIII, 1846.
2 Ibid.
3 Edwin Norris, ‘On the Kapur-di-Giri Rock Inscription’, JRAS, Vol. VIII, 1846.
4 The story of Lumsden and the Corps of Guides is told in Charles Allen, Soldier Sahibs: the Men who Made the North-West Frontier, 2001.
5 Alexander Cunningham, Inscriptions of Aoka, 1877.
6 The story of the ‘Hindustani fanatics’ is told in Charles Allen, God’s Terrorists: the Wahhabi Cult and the Roots of Modern Jihad, 2004.
7 James Abbott, ‘Gradus ad Aornon’, JRAS, Vol. XIX, 1856.
8 Abbott’s thesis was afterwards taken apart by Aurel Stein in 1905, after the latter became the first European to examine the Mahabun massif from an archaeological point of view, albeit hurriedly and under tribal escort. Stein’s view was that the real Aornos lay further north. Stein, Report of Archaeological Survey Work in the North-West Frontier Provinces and Baluchistan for the period from January 2nd 1904 to March 31st 1905, 1905.
9 The story of Abbott and Bellew is told in Charles Allen, Soldier Sahibs: the Men who Made the North-West Frontier, 2001.
10 Dr Henry Bellew, A General Report on the Yusufzais, 1864.
11 Alexander Cunningham, The Bhilsa Topes, 1854.
12 John Marshall translates this as ‘Ananda, son of Vasithi, foreman of the artisans of Raja Siri Satakarni’, John Marshall, A Guide to Sanchi, 1918.
13 Alexander Cunningham, The Bhilsa Topes, 1854.
14 James Mill, History of British India, 1818.
Chapter 12. Sir Alexander in Excelsis
1 Thomas Watters, On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India AD 629–645, 1904.
2 Alexander Cunningham, ‘A-yu-to, or Ayodhya’, ASI Report, Vol. I, 1871. See also Harry Falk, Aokan Sites and Artefacts, 2006.
3 Alexander Cunningham, ‘Four Reports Made During the Years 1862–63–64–65’, ASI Report, Vol. I, 1871.
4 Alexander Cunningham, Mahabodhi or the Great Buddhist Temple under the Bodhi Tree at Buddha-gaya, 1892.
5 Xuanzang quoted in Thomas Watters, On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India AD 629–645, 1904.
6 Alexander Cunningham, ‘Four Reports Made During the Years 1862–63–64–65’, ASI Report, Vol. I, 1871.
7 Sakyamuni’s mother Mayadevi had dreamed of a white elephant implanted in her womb and the elephant was thereafter regarded as the vehicle of the chakravarti, or universal monarch, a position that Buddhists claimed for Sakyamuni and which Ashoka may even have claimed for himself.
8 Ven. S. Dhammika, ‘The Edicts of King Asoka’, Access to Insight, 7 June 2009.
9 Ibid.
10 Mookerji and Dhammika give no translations of these lines, so I have turned to the earlier translation by Professor Eugen Hultzch, Inscriptions of Aoka, 1925.
11 When Daya Ram Sahni carried out further excavations at the Bairat site in 1935–6 he found the fragments of two Ashokan pillars.
12 Sir Alexander Cunningham, Inscriptions of Aoka, 1877.
13 Alexander Cunningham, The Stupa of Bharhut: a Buddhist Monument Ornamented with Numerous Sculptures Illustrative of Buddhist Legend and History of the Third Century B.C., 1879.
14 Alexander Cunningham, The Stupa of Bharhut, 1879.
Chapter 13. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum
1 Markham Kittoe quoted in James Prinsep, ‘Further Elucidation of the Lat or Silasthambha Inscriptions from Various Sources’, JASB, Vol. VI, 1837, p. 708.
2 W. F. Grahame, ‘Rock Inscriptions in Ganjam District’, Indian Antiquary, Vol. I, 1872.
3 Ven. S. Dhammika, The Edicts of King Asoka, 2009.
4 Benudhar Patra, ‘Jaugadha: an Early Historical Fort Town of Orissa’, Orissa Review, Jan 2007.
5 Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, ‘Note on the Ganjam Rock Inscription’, IA, Vol. I, 1872.
6 Cunningham’s acerbic comments on the ASB are to be found in his preface to The Stupa of Bharhut, 1879.
7 Bhau Daji, ‘Rudraman inscription’, JBBRAS, Vol. VII, 1863.
8 Epigraphica Indika, Vol. II, 1881.
9 Bhagwanlal Indraji, ‘Antiquarian remains at Sopara and Padana’, JBBRAS, Vol XV, 1882.
10 James Burgess, Notes on a Visit to Gujarat, 1870.
11 Archibald Carllyle, ‘Discovery of a new Edict Pillar of Asoka at Rampurwaparsa in the Tarai, 32½ miles to the North of Betiya’, ASI Report, Vol. XXII, 1885.
12 See J. Cook and H. E. Martingell, ‘The Carllyle Collection of Stone Age Artefacts from Central India’, British Museum Occasional Paper 95, 1994.
13 Alexander Cunningham, Inscriptions of Aoka, 1877.
14 This chronology is taken from Alexander Cunningham, Inscriptions of Aoka, 1877.
15 J. H. C. Kern, ‘On the Era of Buddha and the Asoka inscriptions’, Indian Antiquary, 1874, and Concerning the Chronology of the Southern Buddhists, 1876,
16 Alexander Cunningham, Inscriptions of Aoka, 1877.
17 Rajendra Lala Mitra, letter to the Secretary to the Government of Bengal dated 31 October 1877, OIOC, BL, quoted in Upinder Singh, The Discovery of Ancient India, 2004.
Chapter 14. India after Cunningham
1 James Burgess, Notes on the Amaravati Stupa, 1882.
2 R. Shama Shastry trans., Kautilya’s Arthashastra, 1915, quoted in R. K. Mookerji in his ‘Appendix I. Chanakya and Chandragupta Traditions (from Buddhist Sources)’, Chandragupta Maurya and his Times, 1943.
3 Jawaharlal Nehru, Discovery of India, 1946.
4 Today Cowell is probably best remembered as the man who while rummaging through the library of the Asiatic Society of Bengal found a manuscript of a rubaiyat or ‘collection of quatrains’ by a twelfth-century Persian mathematician, astronomer and sometime poet named Omar Khayyam, which he translated and published in the Calcutta Review – but which he also had copied and sent to one of his former students, Edward Fitzgerald.
5 Harry Falk, Aokan Sites and Artefacts, 2006.
6 Charles Allen, The Buddha and Dr Führer: an Archaeological Scandal, 2008.
7 Harry Falk, Aokan Sites and Artefacts, 2006.
8 Parts of an abacus and a decorated bell retaining the forepaws of a lion were found in Basti District, just south of the Nepal border in 1955, perhaps originating from a village known as Dharamsinghwa (Dharma-lion) or from the temple of Palta Devi, said to contain a large pillar worshipped as a Shiva lingam. Part of another Ashokan pillar may well be the object of worship in the Shaiva temple in the centre of Taulihawa town, on the Nepal side of the border. See Harry Falk, Aokan Sites and Artefacts, 2006.
9 R. Mukerji, S. K. Maitry, ‘A Fortunate Find of 1931’, Corpus of Bengal Inscriptions, 1967.
10 The various episodes of Waddell’s life have been charted by Charles Allen in The Buddha and the Sahibs, 2002; Duel in the Snows: the True Story of the Younghusband Mission to Lhasa, 2004; and The Buddha and Dr Führer, 2008.
11 Mukherji’s story is told in Charles Allen, The Buddha and Dr Führer: an Archaeological Scandal, 2008.
12 Dr L. A. Waddell, Report on the Excavations at Pataliputra (Patna), the Palibothra of the Greeks, 1903.
13 See Mary Stewart, ‘The Persepolitan Legacy in India’, Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies website, 1998.
14 Letter from G. Bühler to P. C. Peppé dated 21 February 1898, Peppé Collection, RAS.
15 Quoted in Charles Allen, The Buddha and Dr Führer: an Archaeological Scandal, 2008. The author has drawn on Dr Salomon’s expertise here.
Chapter 15. Ashoka in the
Twentieth Century
1 Sir John Marshall, ‘The Story of the Archaeological Department in India’, Revealing India’s Past, 1939.
2 A. Foucher, L’art gréco-bouddique du Gandhâra: Étude sur les origines de l’influence classique dans l’art bouddhique de l’Inde et de l’Extrême-Orient, Vol. I
1905, Vol. II 1922, Vol. III 1951.
3 John Marshall in an unpublished letter to a friend dated Sanchi, 28 December 1918. Courtesy of John Wilson of John Wilson Manuscripts, Cheltenham.
4 A. Foucher, La Porte Orientale du Stupa de Sanchi, 1910.
5 Sir John Marshall, A Guide to Sanchi, 1918.
6 Radhakumud Mookerji, Asoka, 1927.
7 Harry Falk, ‘The Preamble at Panguraria’, P. Kieffer-Pulz and J. Hartmann, eds., Bauddhavidyasudhakarah, 1997. This section owes much to Professor Falk’s remarks in Aokan Sites and Artefacts, 2006.
8 From the Sahasram MRE, as translated by Eugen Hultsch, Inscriptions of Aoka, 1925.
9 Ibid.
10 This argument has been put forward by Harry Falk in his Aokan Sites and Artefacts, 2006.
11 D. C. Sirkar, ‘Minor Rock and Pillar Edicts at Kandahar and Amaravati’, Ashokan Studies, 1979. In 1959 a sandstone washing-stone in a house in Amaravati town was seen to have some Brahmi characters inscribed on its side face. It bore traces of the characteristic Ashokan polish and appeared to have been cut down a section of pillar so as to make a rectangular slab. Because of the way it has been cut it carries only a few letters from each of seven lines, with letters lost on either side. What appear to be words like paratra, ‘in the future world’, and abhisita, ‘anointed’, are characteristically Ashokan as found on the Girnar Rock Edict.
12 The case for and against Pabhosa as an Ashokan quarry is given in Harry Falk, Aokan Sites and Artefacts, 2006.
13 It may be that this started not in Taxila, as long assumed, but the island of Lanka. Excavations at Anuradhapura in the late 1980s and 1990s, under the direction of the British archaeologists Raymond Allchin and Robin Coningham, have produced potsherds bearing short inscriptions scratched in Brahmi lettering – not in itself surprising, except that radiocarbon dating has placed them in the fourth century BCE; that is to say, before Ashoka and perhaps even pre-dating his grandfather Chandragupta. See R. A. E. Coningham, R. Allchin, C. M. Batt and D. Lucy, ‘Passage to India? Anuradhapura and the Early Use of the Brahmi Script’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Vol. VI, 1996.