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234
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JULY, 1891.
appears to us making a public profession of his religious belief ,20 it is then that he shews the genuineness of his devotion to Buddhism in the most decisive way, by making his son Mahêndra, and his daughter Samghamitra, enter into the religious order. Everything invites us to consider that here was really a serious evolution in the religious career of the king.
In the narration of these incidents, the principal fact, on which all the others, and in particular the ordination of the king's son, depend, which is described to us in all detail, and to which the chronicler evidently gives a particolar importance, is the State Visit which the king pays to the saingha in the midst of which he takes his seat: - samghamajhambi atthâsi vanditvå samgham uttamam.21
One cannot help here recalling to mind the passage in the Edict of Rūpnâth and Bairat (perhaps the same expression is also employed at Sahasaram, but a lacuna renders the point doubtful), in which Piyadasi refers to his second and definite conversion. It will be recollected that the reading proposed by Dr. Bühler is in the one ai sumi haka saighapapite, and in the other an mamaya sainghé papayité. I have already explained why I am unable to accept his translation, as involving the idea that the king entered into the community and became himself a monk. If we take the words, in the meaning I have proposed, as referring without metaphor to a real material entering into the Assembly Hall, then we have here an allusion to the very ceremony which the Mahávamsa describes to us. The king could well refer to it a year subsequently as a known event, for it had been solemn and striking enough for its memory to be preserved living for so long afterwards. All the difficulties which surrounded the first interpretation of the phrase fall together to the ground; and this agreement would be decisive, if the state of the preservation of the inscription permitted an entire certainty. As we have it at present, it appears to me to receive a remarkable confirmation from a comparison with the 8th Edict.
We have seen that the 8th Edict refers to the same moment of the life of the king, to the same date, and the same event. Now, there again, the idea of the conversion of the king is associated by him with the memory of 'setting out' from the palace, of an excursion' out of it. No doubt the expressions used by the king are before all inspired by the Buddhist phraseology about
setting out for the bodhi,' but this word-play, and the comparison with the pleasare excursions of his predecessors, only become really nathral if his conversion is connected by an intimate and close bond with the excursion' which he describes immediately. It is clear that this kind of 'excursions' must have become habitual to him.22 It is equally clear that the commencement of this practice, the first example of these excursions,' is closely associated in the king's mind with his active conversion to Buddhism, and in the expression by which he commemorates it, while admitting that the description does not refer exclusively to the visit narrated by the Mahdvarea, several traits (samanánari dasané, hirannapatividhané, dharmánusasti, dharmaparipuchhd) agree perfectly with it, and really appear to preserve its memory. These coincidences of detail between the Sinhalese chronicle and our edicts seen to me to be remarkable and instractive, but at the same time I do not pretend to exaggerate their certainty. What is sure is that tradition has more or less obscurely preserved the memory of two stages which were said to have been traversed in his religious life by the king whom it calls Asoka, the first corresponding
20 In the narrative of Buddhaghôaha (Samantapdaddila, in Suttavibhanga, ed. Oldenberg, I. 304), the miracle whtoh shows to the king the 84,000 stipae at once, has for its object to make him altogether believing (ativiya buddhasanand pastddyyati); at that period, therefore, his faith had great need of being stimulated.
21 Mahdv. p. 85, 1. 8.
n I am at present much inclined to believe that this idea is expressly contained in the last sentence of the edict that bhiyali ought to be taken in the sense of again,' and that it is necessary to understand: 'in the future this virtuous pleasure is again (i.e. has been, and will be on occasions) the portion of Piyadasi.' I should then prefer to take dhammaydird in the preceding sentence as a singular, as a kind of collective which should embrace probebly several series of excursions. It is true that the pronoun td of most of the versions seems to indicate the plural; but sd or end of Girnar, the most correct of all, requires the singular. In any case, and in either sense, it will be necessary, therefore, to admit an inaccuracy.
