Political History Of Ancient India

SR No.: 032292
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Hemchandra Raychaudhari
Publisher: University of Calcutta
Publication Year: 1950
Total Pages: 714
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 17 MB

Page 371

342 POLÍTICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDÍA
When he had been consecrated thirteen years, Asoka created the new officials called Dharma-mahāmātras who were specially entrusted with the work of "dharmādhithāna" and "dhaimavadhi”, i.e., the establishment and increase of Piety.
While his officers were busy preaching the new Gospel, the emperor himself did not remain idle. Already in his eleventh regnal year he had "started on the path” leading to Sambodhi (ayāya Sambodhim) and commenced the tours of Piety (Dhaima-yātā) in the place of the old tours of pleasure (Vihāra-yātā). In the tours of Piety this was the practice-visiting ascetics and Brāhmaṇas, with liberality to them; visiting elders, with largess of gold ; visiting the people of the country or perhaps rural areas (Janapada) with instruction in the Law of Piety, and discussion of that Law. The memory of a pious tour in Aśoka's twenty-first regnal year? (B. C. 249 according to Smith ) is preserved by the Rummindei and Nigāli Sāgar epigraphs in the Nepalese Tarai. These records prove that Asoka visited the birthplace of Gautama and paid reverence to the stupa of Konākamana, one of the former Buddhas.S
In 242 B.C., according to Dr. Smith, Aśoka issued the Seven Pillar Edicts which contain, among other things, a review of the measures taken during his reign for the “promotion of religion, the teaching of moral duty".
1 Some scholars take Sambodhi to mean 'supreme knowledge'. But Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar contends that Sambodhi is equivalent to the Bodhi Tree or the Mabābodhi Temple at Bodh Gayā. According to the Divyavadāna (p. 393) Asoka visited Bodhi in the company of the Sthavira or Elder Upagupta (Hultzsch, CII, xliii).
2 Were these tours decennial?
3 He had enlarged the stupa of Konākamana six years earlier, but his personal presence on that occasion is by no means clear.