The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c29.8.3

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.