Indian Antiquary Vol 18

SR No.: 032510
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: John Faithfull Fleet, Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 454
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1889.
It will be remembered that the concluding words of the 12th (Rock) edict are immediately followed at Khálsi by characters which I have been able to correct with certainty into athavásá. bhisitasa, the certain eqaivalent of which, though greatly altered, reappears at Kapur-di-Giri (I. 253). Deceived by the divisions introduced into the reproductions of the Corpus, which I supposed to depend on positive traces preserved by the rock itself, I connected these words with the 19th edict; but a kind communication from Dr. Kern allows me to rectify this passage 80 as to leave no further doubt. We must, according to his ingenious conjecture, separate the words in question from the 12th edict and transfer them to the commencement of the 13th, the genitive -abhisitasa, being in agreement with Piyadasisa. The words in brackets should therefore be struck out from the end of my translation of the 12th (Rock) edict, and the commencement of the 13th should be modified in the following manner :- In the ninth year of his coronation, the king Piyadasi, dear onto the Dôvas, conquered the immense territory of Kalinga.' Now, it will have been seen from my translation, that it was to this conquest, and to the horrors of which it had been the occasion, that the king attributes his religious conversion. We have, therefore, two facts :-(1) that the conversion of the king dated from the minth year of his coronation, and (2) that he only commenced to have the edicts which were inspired by his new opinions engraved in the thirteenth. This, I may add, very well agrees with the statement in the 5th edict of Girnår, according to which the creation of Dharmamahámátras dates from his fourteenth year. Now let us compare the commencement of the edicts of Sahasrâm and of Rûpnåth with these two facts. According to the version of this passage, as corrected by Dr. Oldenberg (Mahávagga, I. p. xxxviii, note, Zeitschr. der Deutschen Morg. Ges., XXXV., 473) the king, who speaks, declares that he had passed more than two years and a half after his conversion without showing his zeal actively, but that, at the moment when be was speaking, he had manifested such zeal a year ago. If we add these figures together, we find, on the one hand, that Piyadasi passed eight years and a fraction, say eight years and a half, after his coronation, before he was converted; and that he was then more than two years and a half, say two years and three-quarters, before giving effective proofs of his religious zeal. This makes an approximate total of eleven years, plus a fraction, of religious coldness: and it was accordingly only in the twelfth or thirteenth year of his reign that his zeal became out. wardly manifest. It is exactly at this period that his evidence in the present passage fixes his first religious edicts. This is a coincidence which no one could consider to be accidental, and there follows this important conclusion that, contrary to the doubts expressed in various quar. ters and to the theory so ably upheld by Dr. Oldenberg (Zeitsckr. der Deutschen Morg. Ges., loc. cit.) the author of the inscriptions of Sahasråm and of Rūpnâth was indisputably the same Piyadasi as he who published the rock tables of Girnar, and the Columnar edicts, and that, in dealing with these inscriptions, we are certainly on Buddhist ground. It follows, moreover, that the edicts of Sahasrâm and of Rūpnåth, belonging, as they do, to the thirteenth year after his coronation, are certainly amongst the first which he had engraved, and probably the very same as those to which he makes allusion in the passage before us.
2. This phrase contains two difficult words. One is pápová, which has been definitely explained by Dr. Kern as equivalent to prápnwyát. With regard to the first, apakata, I think that the learned Leyden professor has been less happy in his suggestions. He takes it as equivalent to a-prahartá, from the verbal noun prahartar, with task for its direct object. But, besides such a construction, awkward enongh under any circumstances, being repugnant to the style of our monuments, it does not give a very satisfactory sense. Not mutilating these edicts is too small a thing to cause one to acquire, as the sequel shows, various virtues. In the first place, I think that the phrase runs down to -sukhéti. The cha, which in line 6 follows tatha, proves that the entire sentence is to be divided into two parallel halves, the former part of each forming the thoughts of the king, marked and completed by an iti, the latter being the two verbo patirélhámi, and tatha vidahami. This construction makes the explanation of the initial sé more simple. It refers necessarily to loker understood from the preceding lokasa. This being settled, the general sense to be expected from the entire proposition is something to the