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of any belief in a soul, lay in self-conquest. No ordinary man would have so behaved ; and the result must have been due mainly to his own character, his firmness of purpose, his strong individuality. But he was quite incapable of inventing the system. We know it had existed long before. And it is not probable that those who had already trained them. selves in it were wholly without influence upon him.
Henceforward he devoted his great energy, and the powerful resources of his wide empire to the realisation of his new ideals. To that end all his edicts were published, all the changes he made in the administration of his empire were directed, and enormous sums were lavished in the erection of costly buildings in aid of the new faith. It is characteristic that he says not a word of these last. To his mind it was apparently the teaching that was so much the most important thing that it swallowed up every other consideration. But the unanimous testimony of all the later traditions, confirmed as it is by the actual remains discovered, leaves no doubt upon the point.
It is true that no building erected by Asoka remains intact above ground, but an inscription of his has been found at Sānchi, and it is the unanimous opinion of scirolars that he built the first temple at Bodh Gayā. Sanchi, the old name of which is Chetiva Giri (the Hill with the Shrine upon it), must have been a famous place before Asoka went to Ujjeni. There are no less than eleven topes on the plateau at the top of the hill. Some of them were opened in 1822 and the rest in 1851. At the second excav
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
