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Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s21: Sources

Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s21

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English

Sources

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Legend has cast a halo of glory around Asoka as around all such heroes of nations; and the legend of one age often derives its colour from the history of its predecessor. The cycle of Asokan legends has come down to us in two versions. The southern recension, found in the two Pali chronicles of Ceylon —*Dipavamsa* and *Mahāvamsa*, in its present form, dates from the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., but rests on material of much earlier origin. The northern account in the *avadānas* presents the same features with variations. Some indication of the age of the *avadānas* we get from the fact that they are illustrated in the sculptures on the gateways of Sāñchi. Both versions contain amplifications, under the influence of local conditions, of a more primitive legend that had grown up among the Buddhist communities in the neighbourhood of Pāṭaliputra. Kauśāmbi and Mathurā might have been the centres where the peculiarities of the Southern and Northern recensions were developed round about 150-50 B.C.¹. The legends were primarily meant for the religious edification of the faithful; the more valuable on that account to the historian are the historical details which they have preserved and which fit in with the data from the inscriptions. For the rest we must accept as fact whatever is not intrinsically improbable, though we have no means of deciding between contradictions in the rival versions. Was Aśoka in his youth viceroy at Ujjayinī (*Mahāvamsa*) or at Takṣaśilā (*Avadāna*)? Was Tissa Moggaliputta or Upagupta the spiritual guide of Aśoka? Both are placed by legend in the same relation to Buddha by a chain of four intervening patriarchs. Or did Aśoka, as seems not improbable, follow his own bent and the redactors of legend invent the relation between the emperor and the patriarchs each after his own fashion? To such questions no definite answers can be given.

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¹ Przyluski—*La Legende*, ch. v. Also Marshall and Foucher—*Monuments of Sāñchi*.

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'The extent of Aśoka's empire may be guessed already', says Hultzsch², 'from the distribution of his rock-edicts, which it seems were engraved along the very confines of his territories. In the west they are found at Girnar on the Kathiawar Peninsula and at Sopara on the Bombay coast; in the south in the Raichur district of the Nizam's dominions and in the Chitaldroog district of the Mysore State; and in the east at Dhauli and Jaugaḍa in the Purī and Ganjam districts. The north-eastern boundary line is marked by the rock edicts at Shāhbazgarhi and Mānsehrā in the Peshāwār and Hazāra districts and at Kālsī in the Dehrā Dūn district, and it is continued by the Nigāli Sāgar and Rummindei pillars in the Nepalese Tarāi and by the Rāmpurvā pillar in the Champarān district¹. The discovery in 1929 of a fresh set of the Fourteen Rock-Edicts and a minor Rock Edict at Yerraguḍi (near Gooty) in the Kurnool district and that of fragments of Rock and Pillar edicts in Aramaic script in Laghman¹ do not materially alter our estimate of the extent of the empire as borne out by the spread of the inscriptions. But one may legitimately doubt the surmise that the rock-edicts were engraved ‘along the very confines’ of Aśoka’s territories; for tradition and probability alike suggest that the empire extended in some directions particularly in the north and north-west well beyond the extent so defined.

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² *Inscriptions of Asoka*, pp. xxxvi-vii.

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¹ BSOS. xiii, p. 80

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The inscriptions of Aśoka fall into the following classes which are set forth in the order in which they were issued in the course of the reign:

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(1) Two Barābar cave inscriptions recording gifts of caves to Ājīvakas when the king had been anointed twelve years.

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(2) The Minor Rock Edicts found in slightly different versions in several places—Bairāt (Jaipūr), Sahasram (Bihar), and Rūpnath (M. P.) in Northern India; Maski, Pālkiguṇḍu and Gāvimath (Hyderabad), Brahmagiri, Siddāpura and Jatinga Rāmeśvara in Mysore, Yerraguḍi (Kurnool district) in the South. The Mysore and Yerraguḍi versions have a closer agreement among themselves, and they contain an addition to the edict of which the Yerraguḍi version is the fullest. These were issued in the thirteenth year after Aśoka’s coronation, along with

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(3) The unique Bhābrā edict, designated the Calcutta-Bairāt rock inscription by Hultzsch, and addressed to the Buddhist Saṅgha.

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(4) The Fourteen Rock Edicts found in seven more or less complete versions at Girnār, Kālsī, Shahbāzgarhi, Mānsehrā, Dhauli, Jaugaḍa and Yerraguḍi, not to speak of the small fragment of the eighth rock edict found in Sopāra and others in Laghman. These were issued about the fourteenth year after the coronation.

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(4a) The two Kalinga edicts, ‘separate rock-edicts’ as they are sometimes called, meant only for Kalinga ; at Dhauli and Jaugaḍa they take the place of the eleventh to the thirteenth edicts in the other collections, and they must have been issued along with (4) or very soon after.

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(1a) The third Barābar cave inscription, the king having been anointed nineteen years.

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(5) The Rummindeī and Nigālī Sāgar pillar inscriptions dated twenty years after the Coronation.

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(6) The Seven Pillar Edicts dated 26 and 27 years after the coronation and found in six places ; the seventh edict, the longest and in some ways most important, is found only once with the others on the Delhi-Topra pillar. The Delhi-Mirath, Lauriya-Ararāj, Lauriya Nandangarh, Rāmpurvā, and the Allahabad-Kośām pillars contain only the first six edicts ; the last has in addition two short inscriptions, the unique record, called ‘Queen's edict’, and ‘Kauśāmbi edict’ on Sanghabheda which falls into another class.

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(5a) The minor Pillar edicts found in Sāñcī and Sārnāth besides Kauśāmbi, the Sārnāth version being the best preserved. This must have been issued towards the end of the reign sometime after the Seven Pillar Edicts.

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There are thus thirty-three Aśoka inscriptions of varying length and importance, many of them available in different versions. The language of the inscriptions is Māgadhi, the official language of the royal chancery at Pāṭaliputra ; only some versions, particularly those of Girnār and Shābazgarhi, exhibit certain not very important indications of the influence of local dialectical variations.¹ The inscriptions in Shābazgarhi and Mānsehrā are in the Kharoṣṭhi alphabet written from right to left; at the end of the inscriptions in the Mysore state the word *lipikareṇa* is also found written in Kharoṣṭhi ; otherwise all the Aśoka inscriptions except the Laghman fragments are written in one variety or other of the Brāhmī script. At Yerraguḍi, the Minor Rock Edict is found written partly in the boustrophedon style, that is alternately from left to right and vice-versa¹.

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¹ Senart in *IA.* xxi, p. 174.

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¹ *ASI.* 1928-9 p. 164.

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There are two lines of evidence bearing on the chronology of Aśoka's reign, in fact, of the history of the Mauryan empire ; neither of them leads to a precise conclusion, though both together may be taken to point approximately to the truth.

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One is the reckoning in the era of the *pari-nirvāṇa* of the Buddha, preserved in the *Dīpavaṃsa*, which dates Aśoka's accession in 214 A.B. and his coronation in 218². These precise indications unfortunately lose much of their value owing to the uncertainty of the date of the *nirvāṇa*. The choice seems to lie between 543 B.C. and 483 ; with the first date as the starting point, 218 A.B. would bring us to 325 B.C., a date more suited to the beginning of the Mauryan empire and of Chandragupta's reign than that of Aśoka. And the suggestion has been offered that in the chronicles of Ceylon, the epoch of the beginning of the Mauryan empire was mixed up with that of the Coronation of Aśoka which was the event they really cared for³. Ingenious as this reconciliation is, it is not easy to accept it in view of the fact the Buddha-varsha of 543 B.C. is a comparatively modern fabrication, whereas 483 B.C. has much better claims to be considered the true date of the Buddha era.,⁴ With this as starting point, we get 265 B.C. for the coronation of Aśoka, 269 B.C. for his accession, 297 for that of Bindusāra and 321 for the accession cf Chandragupta, a scheme which has intrinsically much in its favour⁵. Some writers would, however, prefer the date 486 B.C. for the death of the Buddha, on the strength of the Chinese ‘dotted record⁶.’

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² Obviously the *Divyāvadāna* (p. 368) and other northern works giving 100 years as the interval between the *pari-nirvāṇa* and Aśoka are confusing two Aśokas—Geiger tr. MV. p. lx.

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³ *JBORS.* i. 97.

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⁴ See Geiger's tr. of MV. Intr. Sectt. 5 and 6.

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⁵ Hultzsch doubts the value of the figure 218—p. xxxiii.

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⁶ *JRAS* 1905, p. 51.

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This scheme gains in strength from the confirmation it receives from the second line of evidence furnished by Rock-Edict XIII which gives the names of five contemporary Hellenistic monarchs : ‘the Yona king Antiyoka, and beyond him four kings, viz., Turumaya, Antekina, Maka and Alikasudara’.

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The same monarchs are mentioned more summarily in the second Rock-Edict as : ‘the Yona king Antiyoka and the kings who are the neighbours of this Antiyoka’. These kings are now identified respectively with Antiochus II Theos of Syria (261-46 B.C.), Ptolemy II Philadelphus cf Egypt (285-247), Antigonus Gonatas of Macedonia (276—239), Magas of Cyrene (c. 300-250) and Alexander of Corinth (252-c.244). The date of the edict, thirteen years after the *abhisheka* would fall therefore between 252 and 250 B.C.¹, the period when all the kings mentioned were living, and the year of Aśoka’s coronation must therefore lie between 265 and 263, and of his accession between 269 and 267 B.C. It is seen thus that these two lines of reasoning confirm and corroborate each other.

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¹ The limits would differ if Alexander of Epirus (272—c. 255) is thought of. See also discussion of chrnology under Chandragupta by H. C. Raychaudhuri.

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Some writers prefer to think of Alexander of Epirus who died about B.C. 255 in the place of the less known Alexander of Corinth, and thus fix the date of R. E. XIII at about that date².

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² *Acta Orientalia*, 1940 pt. ii.

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It is now settled that the figure 256 at the end of the first Minor Rock inscription, whatever its exact significance may be, has no reference to a date in the Buddha era, and that far from being one of the latest inscriptions of the reign, it is most probably one of the earliest inscriptions of Aśoka.

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Fleet drew attention to the references to the Tishya day in the Aśoka inscriptions ; and assuming that Aśoka held his *abhisheka* on such a day, and taking October 13, 483 B.C. as the day of Buddha’s nirvāṇa, he calculated that April 25, 264 B.C. was the day of Aśoka’s *abhisheka*³. But such precise calculations rest on too many unproved assumptions and will by no means command easy assent.

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³ *JRAS* 1909 pp. 26 and 28-34.

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