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JULY, 1891.)
THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PIYADASI.
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the royal authority at Tosall (Dh, det. ed. II, 1), at Ujjayini, and at TakshasilA (Dh. J. det. Ed., I, 23, 24). We find an allusion to his wives in the fragment designated the Edict of the Queen. In it Piyadasi gives orders, the meaning of which, owing to the partial destruction of the stone, we are unable to grasp exactly, regarding the acts of liberality of the second queen (dutiyá dévi). Amongst these acts he mentions the granting of mango groves and gardens; it would seem, also, that he praises her religious zeal and her mercifal disposition; and she thus appears to us as sharing, as we have a right to expect, the ideas as well as the doctrines of the king.
The royal residence was at Pataliputra, as the chronicles say, and as follows from the Rock Edict, G. V, 7, compared with the other versions. With the exception of the four towns of Pataliputra, Ujjayini, Takshabila, and Tosali, which have just been referred to, and of Samapa (J. det. Ed. I, 1, and II, 1), Piyadasi mentions no name of any people or town expressly as being among those which were directly under his rule (vijita). The only exception is Kalinga, the conquest of which he mentions as having taken place in the ninth year after his coronation. The towns of Tôsal151 and of Samâpâ cannot be precisely identified. It is, however, almost certain that Tosali, which formed the residence of a prince of the blood royal, must have been a considerable centre, possibly the capital of the whole province. Samapa was probably a town of secondary importance, and cannot have been very far from Jangada, the site where the inscriptions which mention it were engraved.
Although Piyadasi gives us so few explicit geographical data, the indications regarding his neighbours on different sides, with which he supplies us, allow us to form some idea of the extent of his vast dominions. I believe that I have shewn above that the enumerations unfortunately both vague and brief, of the frontier populations, which are contained in the inscriptions, are of two kinds; one set refers to the provinces situated to the west and southwest of the empire over which Piyadasi was suzerain; the other includes the independent bordering nations. Both contain many names of which the identification is more or less hypothetical, and even with regard to those about whose identification we need not be in doubt, we have too incomplete information regarding the exact boundaries to which they extended in the time of Piyadasi, to arrive at very precise conclusions.
In the first category, that of populations subject to the suzerainty of the king, appear the Yavanas (V and XIII), the Kambojas (V and XIII), the Patêpikas (V and XII), the Gandhåras (V), the Ristikas or Rastikas (V), the Visas and the Vțijis (XIII), the Nâbhakas and the Nábhapamtis (XIII) and finally the Bbôjas (XIII), the Andhras and the Pulindas (XIII). The Gandharaga and the Kambojas53 certainly belonged to the tract of the river Kabul ; it is probable that these Yavanas, subjects of a Hindů power, formed a province still further off in the direction of the Greeks of the independent kingdoms, and that the list, commencing with them and continuing through the Kambojas and the Gandh&ras, follows a regular course from exterior to interior. We have, however, no certainty with regard to this, and this name Yavana could here, if necessary, designate not a particular country, but the elements of the population which were of western origin, and which were at this epoch scattered throughout this part of India. I may remind my readers of the Tashaspa, styled 'Yavanarkja of Asoka the Maurya,' i. e., probably, under the suzerainty of Aśôka the Maurya, whom the inscription of Rudradaman at Girnar mentions as having repaired an embankment in the neighbourhood, and who con. sequently held sway in the peninsula of Kathiwad. I would also remind them of the considerable number of dedications which, in the Buddhist caves of Western India, emanate from Yavanas, 56
Of. Korn, J. R. 4. 8., N. 8., XII, 384. - Lassen, Ind. Alterth., I, 509; II, 150.
* Lassen, Ind. Alterth., I, 591. # Cr, Laren, Ind. Alterth, II, 2018 and 1. One is reminded of the shatern territories of Gedroia and Arachosia. which Selecus ooded to Chandragupta (Droysen Gesch. des Hellenismus, II", 199 and L.)
- Cl. Bargon, Arohaol. Suru. West. India, 1874-1875, pp. 128 and if » CL, Bhagwo.Al Ladrajh, J. . A.S., Bo. Br., xv, pp. 874-975
