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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
256
OLD BRAHMI INSCRIPTIONS
parade of swords, umbrellas, flags, guards and horses, and all ceremonies of victory to be performed. The eighth year's record (I. 9) says that he sumptuously feasted all sections of the people once in Mathurā and subsequently in Kalinga, and organised triumphal processions as a means, no doubt, of impressing the idea of victory on the minds of the people. The erection of a new royal palace known by the name of Jahā-vijaya-pāsāda, “the Great-victory Palace,” the assuming of the self-conferred title Mahā-vijaya, “the Great Conqueror," the bringing back by a triumphal procession from Anga-Magadha to Kalinga of the Kalinga Throne of Jina which was carried off by King Nanda as a trophy, the receiving of tributes and valuable presents from the king of Pāņdya, as well as from a hundred Väsukis, the entertaining of the citizens of the capital of Kalinga with feasts, festivities and musical performances, the remitting of taxes and duties, the adorning of the capital with new roads, squares, gate-bars and towers --- all helped him to keep the people always in excitement, and induce them, as we may say, to join the army to fight for the glory of their country.
It seems that Mr. Jayaswal' and Prof. Radhakumud Mookerji have tried the impossible in endeavouring to infer the total of the population of Kalinga from the total number of its standing army. Whether assuming with Goltz that "every 15th soul of the population can take up arms in defence against a foreign invasion," or slightly altering with Prof. Mookerji, the proportion of its fighting strength to its total population from six per cent. to eight per cent. one counts 75 or 60 lacs as a reasonable figure of the population of Kalinga in Asoka's time against the present population of 50 lacs, we must treat it as nothing but an ingenuity without proofs. To infer the total of the population from the total of the standing army of a country, no matter whether it is Kalinga or any other land, is to forget that history is neither logic nor mathematics. Anyhow, we may assure Prof. Mookerji that Khāravela's inscription keeps us entirely in the dark about the population of Kalinga.
The soundness of administrative policy and method is another test for determining the status of a king overlord. The Hāthi-Gumphā inscription bears a clear testimony to the fact that it was a declared policy of King Khāravela to govern his kingdom in accordance with established customs
1. JBORS., Vol. III, Part 1V, p. 440. 2, Asoka, p. 162, f, n. 3,
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