History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c16.s3.16

c16.s3.16

One question not absolutely certain is whether the donor of the caves was in fact Aśoka. This uncertainty has been recognized by Hultzsch,³ who admits that they may have been given by another member of the Maurya dynasty. But he points out that “two of the caves . . . were dedicated . . . when the donor had been ‘anointed twelve years’ . . . This happens to be the regnal year in which the author of the rock- and pillar-edicts commenced to issue ‘rescripts of morality’”. If the Piyadasi of the Barābar Hill inscriptions was not Aśoka then we must assume that he was Candragupta, Bindusāra, or one of the shadowy successors of Daśaratha, for the latter has left dedicatory inscriptions in the caves of the nearby Nāgārjunī Hill in which he has used his personal name, and we may assume that, had he been the donor of the Barābar caves, he would have recorded his name in these also. No other king has the same strong inherent probability of being the donor of the Barābar caves as has Aśoka. We have no evidence that the custom of incising inscriptions upon rock was practised before his reign, and there are no epigraphic records whatever of the successors of Daśaratha.