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250
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JULY, 1891.
himself to all functionaries whose rank corresponded with this designation. In this sense there are inihandtras in all provinces (Edict of the Queen), whom the king represents as charged with the responsibility of conducting urgent matters (VI). At the commencement of the first detached edict at Dh, and J., he addresses the muhamátras who are at Tosali (or at Samapa), and who are charged with the administration (probably with the judicial administration in particular) of the town,-nagalaviyshalalus. It is to similar functionaries that the Edict of Kausâmbi is directed. But there were also other mahdmatras, each entrusted with the special superintendence of a religious sect, one with that of the Buddhist sanngha, another with that of the Brahmaņs, of the Ajivikas, or of the Nirgranthas (Col. Ed. VIII, 5). The word was thus naturally chosen to form, in composition with special determinatives, the title of functionaries of various orders; such are the ithjhakhamahdiátras, or officers charged with the surveillance over women of the harem (XII), the antamahámátras, the frontier officers, or more exactly, the officers appointed to communicate with the populations across the frontiers (Dh., J. det. Ed. II) ;) such, finally, are dharnmamahamitras. As regards these last Piyadasi expressly claims the credit of the institution of the office (IV), and it is natural to conclude that the others existed before his reign. The case is the same with the prative daka 388 (VI), whose reports he arranges to receive at all moments of the day,67 and with the vachabhimikas (XII), a class of overseers whose duties we have no means for precisely indicating. Bat in the case of all, the king has enlarged and in some way or other remodelled their duties, adding to the special functions of these officers those of a moral surveillance, of a sort of religious propaganda, on which alone he insists in his rescripts.
The same idea pervades all his new institutions, at least all those which are borne witness to by the inscriptions. As far as regards the dharmamah&matras, the name itself is significant Their creation goes back to the fourteenth year of Piyadasi's coronation (V). He also claims. the credit of tbe institution of the rajjúkas : hêvan mama lajúka kata janapadasa hitasukhaye (Col. Ed. IV, 12). The functions and the hierarchical grade of these officers are enveloped in some obscurity. It is probable that the true form of the word is rajjúka, and that Prof. Jacobi has rightly connected them with the rajjús of the Jain texts, whose title the commentators explain by lékhaka, 'scribe. The Kalpasútra appears to bear witness to their habitual presence, and to their importance at the courts of kings. Dr. Bühler (p. 20), while approving of this derivation and of this meaning, also asks whether we are to see, in these rajjúkas, clerks fulfilling the functions of scribes, or a caste of scribes from which the king may have specially recruited the personnel of his administration. The sentence of the 4th Col. edict which I have just quoted, hardly leaves any room for doubt; it is incompatible with the second hypothesis: but the nature of their functions, even taking as a foundation the translation of the word by lékhaka, is capable of diverse interpretations; and it is, therefore, the more necessary to examine our texts as closely as possible.
The rajjakas are mentioned on three occasions, - in the 3rd of the fourteen (Rock) edicts. and in the 4th and the 8th of the Colamnar edicts. Of the last passages, the first contrasts them with the whole range of royal functionaries, grouped collectively under the designation of men of the king. The second tends to the same conclusion; the king, after having stated, without specification, that he has appointed over his people a number of persons, evidently officials, to teach them, adds immediately, I have also appointed rajjúkas over hundreds of thousands of living beings, and they have been ordered by me to instruct the faithful in such and auch a manner.' In the 3rd edict, the rajjúkas, together with the prádésika and the faithful, are invited to proceed every five years to the anusarny ána. These rajjúkas must in short have had a position apart from all these functionaries, for the king, in the 4th of the
66 Bühler, p. 47.
67 The word vinila has been, I think, definitely explained by Dr. Bühler, who takes it in the sense of vinitaka, to mean litter or palanquin. This hypothesis antinfies the desideratum which I pointed out in my commentary on the passage, and on account of which I rejected various tentative interpretations : it furnishes a desiguation of place.
