Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s36.6

c11.s36.6

The fourteen Rock-Edicts together with the two Kalinga edicts, and Seven Pillar Edicts are mostly given to descriptions of the different aspects of Dharma in accordance with the programme Aśoka placed before himself when he issued the Minor Rock-Edict (Rūpnāth). In that edict, the first record of the reign issued very soon after the king began to be zealous in the practice of Buddhism and the propagation of Dharma, Aśoka claims that good results had already attended his efforts, and gods had begun to mingle with men in Jambudvīpa as they had never done before—a statement which remains something of an enigma. Two interpretations have been suggested : one by Smith—that the practice of Dharma raises men to the level of the gods ; the other, which seems better, by Hultzsch who explains the statement in the light of the fourth Rock-Edict which mentions ‘religious shows at which Aśoka had exhibited to his subjects in *effigie* the gods whose abodes they would be able to reach by the zealous practice of Dharma’¹. Aśoka then proceeds to say that his success has been the fruit of zeal (*prakrama*) and exhorts all persons of whatever rank, high or low, to practise the like zeal and attain heaven in due course ; he records his resolution to increase Dharma greatly, and to avail himself of rock faces and stone pillars for engraving his message of Dharma on them ; finally he orders his provincial officers to despatch men everywhere within their charges for preaching the Dharma. The two series of Rock and Pillar Edicts that followed comprised an elaboration and steady execution of the programme thus briefly sketched at the outset, and Aśoka states expressly more than once in these Edicts that this was a new departure introduced by him to make up for the apathy of centuries in which the moral well-being and progress of the people, though vaguely recognised by monarchs as desirable, had seldom been actively promoted by them².