________________
JULY, 1891.)
THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PIYADASI.
297
But this idea is contradicted by several considerations. The most important is that which results from the presence of the 14th edict, in all the versions, and from its tenor. It snffices merely to allude to this. It is clear that, if the references contained in this edict could bave been added to the series of inscriptions which precode them, it is becanse the whole has been considered as forming one ensemble, and must have been engraved at the same time. The amplifications to which the king alludes, do not appear to refer to verbal differences in the text of any particular edict. The variations of this kind between the differen versions which we have noticed are not worthy of being pointed out in this manner. They can only refer to the number of edicts, greater or less, as the case may be, admitted into each series of inscriptions. This pre-supposes a deliberate choice, and excludes a gradual and successive growth of each whole. The presence of the 14th edict. moreover, implies that the inscription is considered as definitely closed. It leaves no opening for any future addition. There has been discovered at Sõpårå, - the ancient Surpâraka, a little to the north of Bombay, - a short fragment of the 8th of the fourteen edicts. We have no means of recognizing to which of the categories alluded to by the king, -amplified versions, abridged versions, and versions of moderate extent, the group of edicts of which this fragment made a part, belonged. But at any · rate, there is no appearance that the 8th edict engraved was separately in this locality; and the
conviction of the learned and ingenious Pandit Bhagwanlal Indraji, a conviction based on various indications, is that this fragment has been detached from an extended whole, analogous to the other collections of eleven or fourteen edicts. I may add that in general tbe arrangements of the edicts is too symmetrical to raise the idea of accidental and successive additions. The changes of handwriting even are hardly apparent, or at least, where they can be allowed to exist, for example, at Khålsi from the 10th edict, they do not correspond to the grouping which would depend on internal arguments founded on dates (group composed of I-IV), or on comparison between different versions (group composed of XI-XIII).
There is, therefore, every reason to believe that, where a certain number of edicts are united in a series, the whole has been engraved at one and the same time, and that, as a consequence, the inscription cannot be older than the latest date mentioned in the whole. Thus the 3rd edict, which bears the date of the 13th year, was probably, in the versions which have come down to us, not engraved before the 14th, to which the 5th edict refers.
Whatever may be the result of this argument, it appears to be without practical importance. There is no reason for believing that the king ever ante-dated or committed an anachronism, 28 and we are, therefore, entitled to maintain that the edicts, supposing them to have been reproduced at any epoch of his reign, have beer faithfully given under their original form ; and that so far as their dates go, they have the force of documentary evidence for the date which each carries. I may add that the indications furnished both by the fourteen edicts and by the columnar edicts, entitle us to conclude that the different tablets follow each other in the exact order of their original promulgation.
This settled, we have little else to do than to record the dates which are given, directly or indirectly, for each of our inscriptions. The edict of Sahasaram-Rapnath is the most ancient of all, and goes back to the thirteenth year dating from the coronation. The 4th of the fourteen edicts being lated in the thirteenth year, edicts 1 to 3, which precede it, belong certainly to the same time, and, in the third, we have, in a manner, the deed of institution of the anusanyána, which this edict, therefore, refers to the thirteenth year. The conclusion is not without interest on account of the 2nd edict, so important as regards the foreign relations of Piyadasi.
23 Laasen (Ind. Alterth. II, 253 ff.) has justly remarked that the inscriptions in which Piyadasi congratulates himself on religious successes gained in foreign countries and above all in the Greek kingdoma, suppose a sufficient interval between the conversion of the king and the date of the inscription We shall shortly see what kind of influence it must have been that Piyadui exercised over the Greek kingdoms. It will suffice for the present to observe that as bin conversion, even if we take as the starting point his active conversion, dated from the end of the 11th year, there remains, between this time and the most ancient inscriptions (2nd ediet) which refer to bis foreign relations, an interval of two years, which is sufficient.
