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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[AUGUST, 1891.
The great aim of Piyadasi is to teach, to spread abroad, and to encourage the dhamma. This word appears to frequently in his inscriptions, and has so characteristic an importance, that it is indispensable to fix its exact meaning. From the definitions or descriptions which the king gives us, it follows that to him dhamma ordinarily implies what we call the sum of moral duties.
• According to the definition given in the 2nd Columnar edict, the dhanima consists in committing the least possible ill (úsinara); in doing much good, in practising mercy, charity, truth, and also purity of life.' The eighth adds gentleness. Several enumerations sum up the principal duties which constitute the essential points of the teaching of the dhasima: obedience to fathers, and mothers (Ed. III, IV, XI, Col. Ed. Vill), to the aged (Ed. IV, Col. Ed. VIII), to gurus (Col. Ed. VIII), respect to gurus (Ed. IX), to brahmanas and bramaņas (Ed. IV, Col. Ed. VIII), to relations (Ed. IV), and even to slaves and servants (Ed. IX, XI, Col. Ed. VIII), charity to bráhmanas and sramaņas (Ed, III, IX), to friends, to acquaintances and to relations (Ed. III, XI), and in one passage (Ed. III), - besides apavyayata (?), of which the meaning has not yet been satisfactorily determined, 69 - moderation in language ; above all, respect for the life of animals (Ed. III, IV, IX, XI).93
Here there is nothing exclusively Buddhist, and hence Piyadasi was able to say (Col. Ed. VII) that the kings who preceded him have laboured in order to cause the progress of the dharima.
The 13th edict contains an enumeration altogether similar to those which sum up elsewhere the teaching of the dharima, yet made in order to prove that the virtues which it records are often practised indifferently by adherents of all religious dogmas: -Everywhere,' says the king,
dwell brahmanas, sramanas or otber sects, ascetics or householders: among these men,.... there exist obedience to superiors, obedience to fathers and mothers, tenderness towards friends comrades and relations, respect to slaves and servants, fidelity in the affections. The dhanima is here attributed to all sects. It is that sára, that'essence,' which is common to all, as Piyadasi says in the 12th Edict, and the universal progress of which he desires. That is why harmony is to be desired. All should hear and learn to practise the dharma from the mouth of one another.'94
At the same time, the Edict of Bhabra shows that the special Buddhist use of dhamma was familiar to Piyadasi, and that the word was already in his time associated with the two other terms, - buddha and sargha, - to constitate the trinitary formula of the Buddhists. Nay, more than that, Piyadasi everywhere puts the idea of the dharima in direct relation with his positive conversion to Buddhism. His first conversion he defines in the 13th edict by the words dharmaváyé dharmakhmatá dhanmántasathi. As for the second, his "setting out for the sarnbödhi' is described by the words dharmayátrá. In the fourth edict, in the senterice, ..... piyadasino ráno dharmacharaména bhéríghóså aho dhariıniaghosó vimánadasana cha
The explanation proposed by Dr. Bühler satisfies me neither as regards the form (the locative would be unique in the inscriptions), nor as regards the suggested meaning which is entirely hypothetical. As for the translation modesty, proposed by Dr. Pischel, he has himself made the suggestion with the most express reservations.
75 The moral ideas which Piyadasi expresses elsewhere, as when he contends that virtue is difficult to practise (. V, VI, X, &c.), or when he declares that he considers it his duty to promote the happiness of the world
Ed. VI), and that in his eyes uo glory is equal to the practice of the dhamma (X), and no conquest to the conquesta made for the gain of the dhashma, and when he maintains (Col. Ed. III) that rage, cruelty, Anger, and pride are the sources of sin, all these observations are of a very general character, and add nothing to what we know from elsewhore.
Ed. XII. I now think that it is thus that we should understand this phrase (1.7). The king never distinguishee between different dhatimas, and does not take the word to express indifferently any belief wbatever, and it is difficult to maintain that he should do so in a solitary passage. I prefer therofore to make añamosiasa depend not on dhanman, but on srundyu and susuriaérault; the genitive thus taking a force equivalent to that which the ablative would have, an occurrence which is not unusual. In the concluding sentence of the ediot, I cannot but accept the correction of Dr. Bühler, and I take atpa pisarda as meaning, 'the belief peculiar to each person,' and not my own belief.'
