The Mauryan Polity c5.s4.1

c5.s4.1

Thanks to the energy and enthusiasm as well as transparent earnestness of scholars in the field of Aśokan script, we have to-day the history of Aśokan studies. The discovery, decipherment and interpretation of the Inscriptions of Piyadasi, as the late Senart styled them, cover a long and fruitful period of nearly two centuries commencing roughly from the middle of the eighteenth century. It would be interesting to know that Aśokan scholarship had an ancient history as well. In the everflowing and nay, overflowing stream of foreign travellers and visitors to this ancient land from very early times for some reason or other, one could reckon two celebrated names Fa-Hien and Yuan Chwang. These were two Chinese travellers who came to India at long intervals, the first visiting it in the fourth century after Christ and the second in the seventh century. Our thanks are due to these two savants, who have left behind them the invaluable legacy of their writings which has considerably contributed to enrich our knowledge of Indian History. These travellers endeavoured to get a true interpretation of Aśokan inscriptions though not with much success. When Fa-Hien visited this land in the fourth century A.D. hardly six centuries have passed after Aśoka and it is indeed a wonder that this traveller was not able to get at experts who would rightly and correctly interpret the script contained on the rocks and pillars where Aśoka had caused his ordinances to be inscribed. This mainly explains that the knowledge of the script had decayed so much that these inscriptions became sealed to an ordinary Indian of the fourth century A.D. According to a recent writer these travellers "have recorded wrong readings of those inscriptions, the results of mere guess work or hearsay information of local people not confessing to their own ignorance of the scripts."¹ This reminds us of the accounts left by Megasthenes some centuries earlier, some of which is treated as either drawn from imagination or from hearsay information. We do not know of any other attempt made afterwards in the direction of deciphering the script. As a matter of fact these accounts were forgotten by the sons of India, and the inscriptions stood dumb and silent for centuries together.