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JULY, 1891.]
THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PIYADASI.
241
The two groups are nowhere mixed np in the same sentence, and the relations of the king with each appear to have been perceptibly different. Amongst the aparántas, the Yavanas, &c., Piyadasi expressly gives a positive protective mission to his dhaiman.ahámátias (5th Edict). He afirms that they (that is to say, without doubt, a number of individuals amongst them more or less considerable) conform to his teaching of the dhamma. Towards the antas, on the contrary, he only directs his representatives to show themselves as kindly neighbours (Dh. J. det. Ed. II.), or refers to them (XIII) as an object of religious conquests. He marks them sharply as exterior to his empire (antingri avijituna, Dh. J. det. ed. II. ; vijitamli..... évamari prácaratesu ... 2nd Ed.). The direct action, with reference to them. on which he congratulates himself, is limited to the communication of medicines and useful plants. This could be carried out by merchants or ambassadors, and does not argue, like the institution of dharmanahámatras, a tie of dependence, nor does it imply any very close connexion. It is evidently because the antas include the most distant populations that he says at Salasarim,-'that the antas thenselves should be instructed.' In short, I believe that this category, included in the first group, represents the foreign nations, completely independent of Piyadasi. The second, that of the áparántas, is made up of the tribes distributed along the western frontier of his empire and over which he exercised, not an absolute dominion (for he appears to dread obstacles to the free expansion of his co-religionists), but a suzerainty more or less effective. The best proof that the two sets of people were not in identical situations with respect to the king, is that he distinguishes between the Yönarâjas, i.e. the Greek kings, with their subjects, and the Yônas, whom he classes with the Kambojas. These last, not being included in the independent kingdoms, must necessarily have been more or less immediately dependent on the power of Piyadasi.
I hence conclude that, if the language of Piyadasi is not always sufficiently clear and explicit, it is at least exact and truthful. He does not seek to exaggerate the degree of his saccess. For example, regarding the Greek kings, in one passage he states simply that lie has distributed medicines and useful plants even over the dominions of Antiochus, which is in no way improbable; and in the other, he mentions the five kings amongst the lords of foreign countries in which he has endeavoured to spread the ilharima. Regarding them he affirms nothing as to the practical results which followed. This reserve induces us to be circumspect in the interpretation of his words, and to refuse to admit lightly hypotheses which are based on alleged inexactness or misunderstanding on his part.
We can then safely take, as a point of departure in the chronology of Piyada i, the synchronism which the enumeration of the five Creek kings offers to us. Only the most decisive arguments would authorise us to conjecture, as has been done by Lassen, 34 that the king has mixed ap different times in his inscriptions.
The texts are perfectly simple and distinct. In the 2nd Edict, he speaks of Antiochus and of kings his neighbours, in the 13th of Antiochus again, and of four Greck kings who are to the north of (or beyond) his kingdom, - Tuzamaya, Antêkina, Maka, and Alikasadara. It is impossible for us to decide whether the neighbours" of Antiochus are the same kings as those who are mentioned by name in the 13th Edict. In itself that is hardly probable, for, as we shall see, those would be very remote neighbours indeed, to whom it would have been by no means easy to despatch medicines and useful plants, and moreover it is not specified that Greek kings are intended. The reading alanıné of Khalsi, and arañe of Kapur di Giri, would do away with all hesitation; but it appears, according to the revision of Dr. Bühler, that Khálsi had not alaine but aine, and that the other reading depends only on an error of General Cunningham. The same is the case with regard to K. It nevertheless appears to me more probable that the neighbours' of Antiochus in the first passage are not the four kings specified in the second. However that may be, the transcription of their names has not been controverted;
* Ind. Alterth. II, 353 and ff.
