Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s22.1

c11.s22.1

The name Aśoka (sorrow-free) occurs but once in the inscriptions, in the Maski record which begins : *devānāṃpiyasa Asokasa* ; but this fact, first found in 1915, has confirmed the identity of Piyadasi of the inscriptions with Aśoka of the Buddhist sources and Aśokavardhana of the Purāṇas which had long been a matter of inference. Aśoka the Maurya is mentioned in the Girnār inscription of Rudradāman (A.D. 150). In the Calcutta-Bairāṭ inscription Aśoka refers to himself as ‘Piyadasi lājā māgadhe’, Piyadasi, the king of Magadha. The more usual formula is ‘devānampiya piyadasi lājā’. The compound word devānampiya, meaning ‘dear to the gods’, was in Aśoka’s time and until much later, an honorofic term, sometimes used also as a synonym of rājan, though by some obscure transition it came to mean ‘fool’ in relatively recent times¹. Piyadasi and the slightly altered form Piyadassana occur repeatedly in the *Dīpavaṃsa* as equivalents of Aśoka; and the same epithet is often applied by Valmiki to the hero of the *Rāmāyaṇa*²; and was adopted by the Sātavāhanas and some rulers of Central Asia; it is applied to Chandragupta Maurya in the *Mudrārākṣasa*; the expression means both ‘of amiable appearance’ and ‘who sees with affection’. Whether piyadasi was the proper name and Aśoka the *biruda* as has been thought, or the other way round, this great king will ever be known to history as Aśoka.