The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c29.8

Language: English

v1.c29.8.1

The events and occurrences of the life of Açoka, as we know them from the sole trustworthy source, namely his own inscriptions, are as follows. In the ninth year after his coronation he effected the conquest of the Kaliṅga country, i.e. Orissa with the Ganjām District of Madras. The slaughter and suffering which attended the conquest produced upon his mind such an impression that it proved the turning-point in his career. He joined the Buddhist order as a lay disciple, and thus subjected himself to the influence of ideas of which he was destined to be one of the greatest propagators. His active devotion to that faith began, however, two and a half years later, about the end of the eleventh year from his coronation, when he became a member of the *Sangha*, or order of monks, and in that capacity travelled from place to place, like the wandering Buddhist and Jain brothers, displaying energy, as he phrases it¹. This energy took the form of visits and gifts to Brāhmans, ascetics, and old people, instructions and discussions relating to the Buddhist *Dharma*, or religious rules and principles. At the end of this tour, which he claims to have had important results, not however very clearly indicated, he issued the first of his religious proclamations, an exhortation to his officials to adopt the like principle of energetic action; and he also orders that his missive should everywhere be engraved upon rocks and on stone pillars, where such existed.

v1.c29.8.2

The practice of carving Buddhist sentiments in this manner on conspicuous objects was afterwards to receive a very wide extension, as is still visible in Tibet, in Central Asia, in China, and throughout the Buddhist world. During the following two years, the thirteenth and fourteenth, Açoka's activity must have been at its height. He issued no fewer than sixteen missives, of which fourteen are found engraved, in one corpus, in places as far distant as the extremities of his empire, at Girnār in Kāthiāwār, at Mānsehra and Shāhbāzgarhī in the Punjab, and twelve of the same with two others at Dhauli and Jaugada in Orissa². In these records, which seem to have been engraved in his fourteenth year, Açoka gives an account of the administrative and other measures which he had adopted. He had been active in causing wells to be dug by the roads, in providing medical aid for men and animals (perhaps a reference to animal hospitals, now known as *Panjroles*), and in propagating medical or useful plants; and this not only in his own dominions, but in those of the neighbouring, independent and quasi-independent, states of South India and the north-west frontier, nay, even as far as the Greek kingdom of Antiochus and beyond. Then he had made regulations restricting the slaughter of animals for food and especially on occasions of festivals and public shows.

v1.c29.8.3

He had issued eloquent appeals for kindness and consideration in family relationships, in dealings with Brāhmans and teachers, in the mutual attitudes of different sects; further, he had denounced what he regarded as excess of profitless (i.e. Brāhman) ceremony in public and private life, and had inculcated economy, earnestness, and mutual exhortation. For the gay progresses of his predecessors on their hunting and holiday excursions (see Chapter XVI, pp. 416–7) he had substituted edifying spectacles and pious conferences; and he had arranged that he should himself always, even in his most private hours, be accessible to urgent calls—a serious inroad upon the strict apportionment of the royal time which we have detailed above (p. 492). Finally, in his thirteenth year he had instituted quinquennial circuits of the leading officials for the purpose of proclaiming the moral law as well as for the discharge of their normal functions. In the fourteenth year he appointed high officials, entitled *dharma-mahāmātras*, with the duty of inculcating piety, redressing misfortune or wrong, organising charitable endowments and gifts. Some of these officers stood in special relation to the establishments, and benevolences, of his various relatives, and the operations of others extended even to the foreign countries to which allusion has been made above.