The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s3.t2.36

v2.c16.s3.t2.36

The above edicts occupy the centre of the scarpment, right in front of the figure of the elephant, in two columns marked by perpendicular lines as described by Major Kittoe, the beginning of each separate edict being indicated by a dash. On the sides of the compartments a framing formed by the lines occur the two separate inscriptions, the first on the left hand side, and the other on the right. These latter are incised in larger letters, and are obviously of a different and subsequent age. The eleventh edict brings the series to a conclusion, and what follows must be posterior. They are also “totally distinct from the general style of Aśoka’s religious edicts.” Instead of opening with the usual formula of “thus spake Piyadasi,” they appeal to the “command of the beloved of the gods”: *devānām piyasa vacanena*, which, says Prinsep, “seems to denote that the proclamation was issued by some functionary under the royal authority.” The same peculiar opening occurs in the short supplementary inscription on the Allahabad pillar, but while that was addressed to the ministry in general, both of the present are confined to the immediate residents in the district—one being worded, “the ministers or officers, enjoying the city in (the province of) Tosalī”,—or it may be “attached to the city *Vihāra*—are to be informed”;—the other to the Prince and the great officers of Tosalī. In both these cases the gerund is in the neuter, but probably the inflections have been omitted in the copying.”⁶⁵ The omission of the name of the Prince in the first tablet and the inclusion of it in the [**53**] last has been accounted for by Prinsep on the supposition that “the Prince had been, in the former instance, too young to be regared, and his chief officers had been the *nagala nehālaka*, as we should say, ‘in charge of the town’.”