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JULY, 1891.)
THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PIYADASI.
233
I should not dwell on this point at such great length, were I not confronted by so high an authority as that of Dr. Bühler. I believe that I have expressed myself sufficiently clearly to shew that the agreement put forward by him rests upon weak and crumbling foundations ; but should we, therefore, conclude that we must give up all hope of finding any points of contact, between the details furnished by the monuments concerning Piyadasi and the Sinhalese traditions about Asoka, which would be of such a nature as to confirm the identification of both forced upon us by so many other considerations? By no means. But we must give up the hope. of finding them in a date which is in my opinion imaginary. claiming to be expressed in the era of the nirvana. On the other hand, I believe that the chronicles have, in certain points of detail, under the name of Asoka, preserved memories of our Piyadasi sufficiently accurate, not only to allow an agreement to appear clearly, but even to contribute usefully to a more precise explanation of certain passages, in our monuments, which are a little vague. The Mahávansa and the Dipavainsa note the conversion of Asoka to Buddhism as an event of high importance. They attribute it to the intervention of his nephew Nyagródha, and surround it with circumstances which are not of a nature to inspire us with an implicit confidence in their account. But the general fact alone interests as here. The two chronicles agree in making it occur in the fourth year after the coronation of the king 18 That is, as we see from the monuments, an error of four years and a fraction : we shall deal with it immediately. To the same period they refer the conversion of the king's brother, Tishya, who held the position of uparája, and who betook himself to a religious life.17 What interests us more, is to find that the tradition, almost void of religious incidents in the interval, fixes at about three years from then, in the seventh year of the coronation,19 an important and significant event.
It is evident that the capital fact in their eyes, the very kernel of the story, the occurrence which gives it its character, is not the inauguration of the eighty-four thousand stúpas raised by order of the king, which is the part most loaded with miracles, and by itself the least credible. The moment is certainly decisive in the life of Asoka ; for from that day, according to the Maharashsa, he received the name of Dharmagoka:10 it is in short the first time that he
16 Dipavarsa, VI. 18, 24; Maharashsa, p. 23,1. 3.
17 Jahiv. p. 34, 1. 7. I may ada, en pissant, that the Dipavarra, it it does not enter into any detail regurdin this conversion, at least contains a reference to it in a passage of which Dr Oldenberg appears to me to have mis. understood the meaning. I refer to the mnemonic verse, VIL 81,
Tiņi vassamhi Nigródh chatuva seamhi bhataro
chhavassamhi pabbajito Mahind) A sokutrajo Dr. Oldenberg translatos and fills up the sense as follows:--"When (Asoka) had completed three years the story of Nigrodha (happened), after the fourth year (he put his) brothers (to death), after the sixth year Mahinda, the sou of Asöka, received the pabbuja ordination." There is nothing to object to in the first and third dates, but for the second his interpretation is inadmissible. The two chronicles agree iu plucing, as indeed is probable, the murder of Asoka's brothers immediately after his accession to the throne, and present itaeth principal method which he employed for assuring his power. We should have to understand 'four years before his coronation,' whilo the other datos, as is natural, take the coronation as a terminos d yuo. That is incredible. It is only necessary to take bhálarú for it invular, which is nothing extraordinary in the language of which this verse gives a specirnen, and to translate in the fourth your of his coronation, his brother (i. e. Tishya, the vic) untered a religious life.'
1 Aud not in th: sixth, as appears from a passage (Mah 20. p. 37, 1. 5), which would thereby contradict xblicit former statements. The same follows clearly from the same ntap adik? (loc. cit. p. 306), according to Whio! Asikit is in the tenth year of his coronation, three years after the ordination of Mahendra. The samu conclusio! follows on a comparison with the Dipava i 80, according to which Mahendra, who was ten years of age when his father came to the throne (VI, 21), had accomplished twenty at the moment when he renounced the world (VIT, 21) Dr. Oldenburk has wccordingly well translated the expression chha vassamhi Ashkassa (VII, 92), 'when Aboka bad completed wix years,' and it is perhaps this phrase, which would make everything agree in the tradition of the Mahi. was, which wo should substitute on p. 37, 1. 5, for the expression chhatthé vased, although the same reading reappears in the new edition of Sumangala (V, 21). As for the propriety of this translation for a phrase like chharas.
be seen from the Dipavanissa, VII, 31. which we have just been considering, that this idioin van be used both to mark a current year (e. g. in chatunassamhi, which must mean 'in the fourth yeur'), as well as to mark the number of yeara passed, as in tri () vassamhi, which can only mean ' after threo years hnd passed.
19 The same statement is also found in a verne cited by the Atka-aradana from the Dirya-avadhna (Burnout, Introduction, p. 374), which in the same passage remarks that 'the king had not long been favourably disposed to the law of Buddha,' a clear allusion to the first conversion.
