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Magadhe or Māgadhaṁ
THE variants in reading do not make any difference in meaning except in the case of Magadhe or Magadham in L 1. Hultzsch read Magadhe and treated it to be qualifying Priyadasi lājā.1 According to him, the whole expression would be translated as "Priyadarsi, the king of Magadha". Senart read Magadham and thought that it qualified Samgham.2
The reading Magadham Samgham, to mean 'the Samgha of Magadha', has been generally rejected as the findspot of this edict in far off Rajasthan outside Magadha which traditionally comprised the Patna, Nalanda, Gaya, Rohtas and Bojpur districts of modern Bihar Pradesh, does not bear out the possibility of addressing the Samgha as the 'Samgha of Magadha'. Since the edict is inscribed on a detached boulder which can be easily transported, it is, however, not quite improbable that it might have been originally placed in a monastery in Magadha and later transplanted in its present findspot in Rajasthan, probably by a mere accident, as there is no evidence to show that a Buddhist monastery existed in the neighbourhood of Bairat in the Mauryan times or immediately afterwards. The presence of Asoka's Minor Rock Edict I in its neighbourhood does not conclusively associate the place with Buddhism as the other places where recensions of M.R.E. I have been found are not generally sought to be identifed with any
1. Hultzsch, ibid.
2.
Senart, ibid.
3. Mookerji, op. cit., p. 116 fn. 5.
2
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