Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s37.25

c11.s37.25

Aśoka suppressed the time-honoured institution of the Royal Hunt¹ of which we get a detailed account from Megasthenes. The final development of Aśoka's policy of *ahiṃsā* took the shape of a very elaborate code of regulation and restriction of the slaughter and mutilation of birds and animals. This code, which is set forth in the fifth Pillar-Edict ends by mentioning the twenty-five annual releases of prisoners that had already taken place. In both respects, Aśoka seems to have amplified the traditional practices known to the *Arthaśāstra* and mentioned there particularly in the chapters on the Superintendent of slaughter-houses and on the pacification of newly conquered territory². Aśoka's code begins with the absolute prohibition of the slaughter of a long list of birds and animals which among others includes parrots, bulls set at liberty³, and she-goats, ewes and sows either with young or in milk, and their young ones which are less than six months old. It continues; 'Cocks must not be caponed. Husks containing living animals must not be burnt. Forests must not be burnt either uselessly or in order to destroy living beings. Living animals must not be fed with other living animals.' After this catalogue of total prohibitions, there follow restrictions to be observed on specified holy days making up a good fraction of the year : 'Fish are inviolable, and must not be sold, on the three *Cāturmāsīs* and on the Tiṣya full-moon during three days, (viz.) the fourteenth, the fifteenth and the first *tithi*, and invariably on every fast day. And during these same days also no other classes of animals which are in the elephant-park (*nāga-vana*) and in the preserves of the fisherman (*kaivarta-bhoga*), must be killed.' Lastly the castration of bulls, he-goats, rams and boar was forbidden on all holy days, and so too the branding of horses and bullocks, practices which Aśoka did not consider it practicable to prohibit altogether. Though based on ancient tradition, this code bears on it the impress of Aśoka's mind, and it applied to the whole of his empire. Its strict enforcement in all its details must have been found difficult; but, though no sanctions are stated in the Code, as in the Arthaśāstra, it was certainly much more than the expression of pious wishes on the part of the emperor, and must have gone far towards the realisation of the practical objects Aśoka had in view; the rules were only elaborations of practices already well known in the land, and they could not have been felt as a vexatious interference with the details of daily life.