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OCTOBER, 1913.]
EPIGRAPHIC NOTES AND QUESTIONS
257
be no doubt, that, the samajas, which the Buddhist emperor tabooed, were those, in which animals were slain to serve meat. And further as there was nothing in the other samajas for Piyadasi to object to, these must have been the samdjas which were called sadhumata by him. But why should they have been considered excellent by him? If they were unobjectionable, he should have bestowed neither praise nor condemnation on them. But why were they designated sádhumatá? It is not difficult, I think, at least to frame a reply which is plausible. The samajas of the second kind were intended as we have seen for the exhibition of public spectacles. Could Aśoka have given a somewhat different turn to these spectacles and utilised the institution of samája for impressing his people with something that was uppermost in his mind? If my interpretations of Rock Edict IV. is correct, in all likelihood Piyadasi must have shown to his subjects in these samajas representations of vimanas, hastins and agniskandhas, by means of which he claims to have increased their righteousness. He informs us that the sound of his drum became a sound of righteousness. What is probably meant is that the drum was beaten to announce a samája in which these spectacles were exhibited. After publishing my interpretation of Rock Edict IV, I was revolving in my mind the question where Aśoka could have shown these representations to his people. The idea suddenly struck me that as samájus were prekshagaras which were thronged by all sorts and conditions of men, he could not have done better than used these places for exhibiting these vimanas, hastins, and so forth. This is the reason, I believe, why samájus of the second class were looked upon favourably by him. That it was the practice of the kings of ancient India to call samajas is clear from the descriptions given above and also from epigraphic references cited in my last article. These last speak of Khâravela, king of Kalinga, and Gautamîputra Satakarni as having amused their subjects with utsavas and samajas.
I now proceed to consider the third or last part of Rock Edict I. in which Piyadasi speaks of hundreds of thousands of animals slain every day in his royal kitchen. In my last article on this inscription, I interpreted this passage to mean that these animals were slaughtered to serve meat on the occasion of these samajas which he now condemned but which he formerly celebrated. But this interpretation is open at least to two objections. First, the word anudivasam is rendered devoid of all meaning. For the natural and usual sense of this term is "every day ", and it is not possible to suppose that before the spirit of righteousness dawned upon the mind of Piyadasi, he was in the habit of holding a samaja every day. Such a thing is an utter impossibility. Secondly, the slaughter of the animals referred to by him took place, as we are distinctly told, in his own kitchen (mahanasa) and not in a samája. Nor is it possible to suppose that these samájas were celebrated near the royal palace, and, in particular, in the close proximity of the royal kitchen. For all evidence points to such samajas coming off not only far from the palace but also far from the city. Both the samajas described in the Mahabharata and alluded to above were held outside the capital towns. And the references from Buddhist literature cited above inform us that they were held on the tops of hills. Hence samájas can possibly have nothing to do with the fearful killing of animals, that, as Asoka tells us, was carried out every day in his kitchen. The questions therefore naturally arise: why did this daily slaughter take place? Was such a thing ever done by any other king? Those who have read chapter 208 of the Vanaparvan of the Mahabharata can have no difficulty in answering these questions. In this chapter we are told that two thousand cattle and two thousand kine were slain every day in the kitchen (mahánasa) of the king Rantideva and by doling out meat to his people he attained to incomparable fame. This statement, I have no doubt, at once unravels the mystery which has hung over the passage of the edict. We cannot help supposing that like Rantideva Aśoka also was in the habit of distributing meat among his subjects and that his object in doing so must have been precisely the same,
Ante, p. 25 ff.
