topics: |  history | india | ancient

rAdhA kumud mookerjee (1884-1964) came of age in a period of intense
nationalist turmoil in Bengal.  While studying at Calcutta University, he
came under the influence of the legendary Satish Chandra Mukherjee, who
selflessly promoted the cause of education for India, via his path-breaking
Dawn Magazine (1897), and then the Dawn Society (1902) to promote technical
as well as general education.  These effortts attracted a galaxy of bright
minds including Radha Kumud.  

In 1905, the year Radha Kumud finished his Ph.D from the University of
Calcutta, a movement allied to the Dawn Society led to the National Council
of Education being launched in 1905.  He would be inducted as a lecturer by
the National Council of Education into the fledgling Bengal National
College (This is the body that became Jadavpur University in 1955).  For
some time, he held the Hem Chandra Basu Mallik Chair of Indian History.

In 1925, he joined the Univeristy of Lucknow, where he won the Gakewad
medal. 

Lectures on Asoka

This volume is based on lectures for the Gaekwad Prize and also on lectures
at Benaras Hindu University (Sir Manindra Chandra Nandy Lectures, 1927).

He and his younger brother Radhakamal, a sociologist who also taught at
Lucknow, were active in the Nationalist movement from an early age.

The nationalist tenor is found in some parts of this text, such as these
opening lines: 

	In the annals of kingship there is scarcely any record comparable to
	that of Asoka, both as a man and as a ruler. To bring out the chief
	features of his greatness, historians have instituted comparisons
	between him and other distinguished monarchs in history, eastern and
	western, ancient and modern, pagan, Moslem, and Christian. In his
	efforts to establish a kingdom of righteousness after the highest
	ideals of a theocracy, he has been likened to David and Solomon of
	Israel in the days of its greatest glory...  p.1

However, as a historian, he has consulted a wide range of sources, and
is careful to cite a range of views before accepting any facts as true. 

Why this book on Asoka

His motivation for adding "another work to the many already existing on the
subject." is that

	In spite of a large literature, old and new, in different languages,
	Pali, Sanskrit, English, French, and German, seeking from a variety
	of standpoints to interpret the unique personality and achievements
	of Asoka, the interpretation is not yet adequate or final. The very
	basis of the interpretation is something that is shifting, growing,
	and improving.

The words of Asoka, telling best his own tale, and inscribed by him in
imperishable characters on some of the permanent fixtures of Nature, have not
themselves come to light all at once, but were discovered piecemeal, and at
different places and times.  

The search for them in out-of-the-way places, the centres of population in
Asoka's days, but now remote from the haunts of men, and hidden away in
jungles, is a story of considerable physical daring and adventure...

The first was noted c. 1850 - the Delhi-Meerut (Mirath) Pillar - an Asokan inscription
was described by Padre Tieffenthaler.

[gives a long list of inscriptions in the preface]

Inscriptions of Ashoka in Delhi (1966)

A recent discovery is the Delhi inscription, discovered in 1966, during
constructions for the residential houses in Kailash Hills/ Srinivaspuri.
Contractor Jang Bahadur Singh noticed some inscriptions written on a rock
which was about to be blasted away.  Archaeologists M.C. Joshi and B.M. Pande
visited the site and identified it as an ashokan edict.

It can be found today in a cement enclosure in the park right next to C-Block
market, East of Kailash / Kailash Hills.  From the ISKCON temple, you
go east for about 300m to reach this park.

The inscription is a shortened version of a  "minor" edict found on many
rocks:

	It is two and half years since I became a Buddhist layman. At first
	no great exertion was made by me but in the last year I have drawn
	closer to the Buddhist order and exerted myself zealously and drawn
	in others to mingle with the gods. This goal is not one restricted
	only to let the people great to exert themselves and to the great but
	even a humble man who exerts himself can reach heaven. This
	proclamation is made for the following purpose: to encourage the
	humble and the great to exert themselves and to let the people who
	live beyond the borders of the kingdom know about it. Exertion in the
	cause must endure forever and it will spread further among the people
	so that it increases one-and-half fold.


	Asokan inscription in Srinivaspuri. 


link: Rana Safvi:  How a Minor Edict Became a Major Find : 
	Ashoka Edict in Delhi

---
Also on bookExcerptise: 
  * Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas
    by Romila Thapar (1973)
		This inscription of Dhamma has been engraved so that any sons
		or great grandsons that I may have should not think of
		gaining new conquests ... but should only consider conquests
		by Dhamma to be a true Conquest...

Excerpts

Prefatory note : Deciphering the inscriptions

But the discovery of the inscriptions did not mean the end of the
chase. There was the difficulty of their decipherment...  The knowledge of
the script in which Asoka had his words written on many a rock or pillar had
remained lost to India for ages. The Chinese travellers, Fa-hien and Yuan
Chwang [Xuanzang / Hiuen Tsang], for instance, who had visited India in two
different periods, the fourth and the seventh century A.D. respectively, and
who were themselves no mean linguists, could not find local experts to help
them to a right reading of the Asokan inscriptions they had come across on
their itineraries.

They 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. Indeed, the recovery of this longlost knowledge of
Asokan script is a romance of modern scholarship. Even when the script was
deciphered, and the words of Asoka were read, there was the further problem
of their correct interpretation.

Thus Asokan scholarship has now to record more than a century of progress
in its three directions of the discovery, decipherment, and interpretation
of the inscriptions.

ch.1 Early life and family

ceylon tradition (as narrated in the dIpavaMsa and the mahAvaMsa) makes
bindusAra the husband of sixteen wives and father of 101 sons, of whom only
three are named, viz., sumana (susima according to the northern legends), the
eldest, asoka, and tiSya (uterine brother of asoka), the youngest son. the
mother of asoka in the northern tradition is subhAdra.ngi, the beautiful
daughter of a brahman of champA, who bore bindusAra another son named
vigatAshoka (vItAshoka), and not tiSya of the ceylon books.  [according to the
asokAvadAnamAla (but not in the divyAvadAna)]

in the southern tradition she is called dharma, the principal queen
(aggamahesi) [mahAvaMsaTIka, ch. iv. p. i25], the preceptor of whose family
was an a AjIvika saint named janasAna - a fact which may explain asoka's
patronage of the AjIvika sect.  dharma came of the kSatriya clan of the
moriyas. 

according to established constitutional usage, asoka as prince served as
viceroy in one of the remoter provinces of the empire.  in the ceylon
tradition, this was the province of western india called avantiraTTham [the
rAshTra or province of avanti] [mahAbodhivaMsa, p. 98] with headquarters
(rajadhani) at ujjain.  but in the indian legends it is the kingdom of the
svasas [svashas; FN: khashas in manu?] in uttarapatha (div.) with headquarters at taxila,
where asoka was temporarily sent to supersede prince susima and quell the
revolt against his maladministration.

there was a second rebellion at taxila which prince susima failed to quell,
when the throne at pataliputra fell vacant and was promptly seized by asoka
with the aid of the minister, rAdhAgupta, and subsequently held deliberately
against the eldest brother who was killed in the attempt to dethrone the
usurper [see divyAvadAna,5 ch. xxvi.]. but the story of the accession is
somewhat differently told in the ceylonese legends, which make asoka seize
the throne from ujjain, where he had been throughout serving as viceroy, by
making a short work of all his brothers except tiSya.

the northern and southern legends, however, agree as regards the disputed
succession, which may therefore be taken as a fact. the southern legends are
far wide of the truth in making asoka a fratricide, the murderer of 99
brothers for the sake of the throne, for which he is dubbed chaNDAsoka
[mahav. v. 189]. Senart [inscriptions, etc. ii.  101] has well shown how the
legends themselves are not at one in their account of asoka's career of
cruelty.

[some of the darkest depictions of the] career of asoka prior to his
conversion appers in chinese sources [yuan chwang; fa-hien, etc.],  and
emphasize the virtuous conduct that followed it. they were interested in
blackening his character to glorify the religion which could transmute base
metal into gold, convert chaNDAsoka into dharmAsoka [ibid.], and make of a
monster of cruelty the simplest of men! 

[much of the testimony of chaNDAsoka's cruelty] also contradicts the
proclamation of rock edict v, in which asoka's brothers (with sisters and
other relatives) are specifically mentioned, and also in minor rock edict ii,
rock edicts iii, iv, vi, xi, xii, pillar edict vii, and the queen's edict, in
all of which is feelingly expressed the emperor's solicitude for the welfare
of even distant relatives.  we gather from these edicts that asoka had a
large family with "brothers and sisters, and other relatives settled at
pataliputra and other provincial towns," "sons and grandsons" (r.e. xiii and
v), who were all maintained at royal expense.

Wives and children of Asoka

the chronicles make his first wife the daughter of a merchant of vedisagiri,
devI by name, whom asoka had married when he was viceroy at ujjain. the
mahAbodhivaMsa calls her vedisa-mahAdevI (p. 116) and a shAkyAnI (ibid.) or a
shAkyakumArI (p. 98), as being the daughter of a clan of the sAkyas who had
immigrated to "vedisaM nagaraM " out of fear of viDudabha menacing their
mother-country. thus the first wife of asoka was related to the buddha's
family or clan.

she is also described as having caused the construction of the great vihAra
of vedisagiri, probably the first of the monuments· of sanchi and bhilsa
(tAya kArapitam vedisagirimahAvihAram).  this explains why asoka selected
sanchi and its beautiful neighbourhood for his architectural
activities. vedisa also figures as an important buddhist place in earlier
literature (see sutta nipata).

of devI were born the son, mahendra, and the daughter, san.ghamitra, who was
married to asoka's nephew, agnibrahmA, and gave birth to a son named
sumana. according to mahavaMsa, devI did not follow asoka as sovereign to
pataliputra, for there his chief queen (agramahiSI) then was asandhimitrA [v.
85 and xx]. the divyAvadana knows of a third wife of asoka, padmAvatI by
name, the mother of dharmavivardhana, who was afterwards called kuNAla. both
mahAvaMsa and divyAvadAna agree in mentioning tissarakkhA or tiSyarakSitA as
the last chief queen of asoka. the divyAvadAna mentions samprati as kuNAia's
son. the kashmir chronicle mentions jalauka as another son of asoka. fa-hien
[legge's tr., p. 3i] mentions dharmavivardhana as a son of asoka whom he
appointed as the viceroy of gandhAra.

Dates for events in Asoka's life

on the basis of the texts to which we owe most of these names, it is also
possible to ascertain some dates in the domestic life of asoka. 

for instance, we are told in the mahAvaMsa that asoka's eldest son and
daughter, mahendra and sanghamitra, were both ordained in the sixth year of
his coronation when they were respectively twenty and eighteen years
old. taking the date of asoka's coronation to be 270 b.c., as explained
below, we get 284 b.c. and 282 b.c. as the dates of the birth of mahendra
and his sister respectively. 

if we take the father's age at the birth of his eldest child as twenty
years, then asoka must have been born in 304 b.c., and was thus seen by his
august grandfather, chandragupta maurya, who died in 299 b.c.  it is also
stated that asoka's son-in-law, agnibrahmA, was ordained in the fourth year
of his coronation, i.e., in 266 b.c., before which a son was born to
him. thus sanghamitra must have been married in 268 b.c. at the latest,
i.e., at the age of fourteen.

ch.2 : History

from his early life we now pass on to the details of his career as king.

there was an interval of about four years between his accession to the throne
and formal coronation, if we may believe in the ceylon chronicles. the
hypothesis about a contested succession might perhaps explain this. a more
probable explanation suggested is that the coronation of a king must await
his twenty-fifth year, as pointed out in the inscription of the kalinga king,
kharavela (jbors, vol. iii. p. 461], so that asoka must have ascended the
throne when he was about twenty-one years of age. but this suggestion, as
already explained, seems to be contradicted by tradition, if we may believe
in it.  according to it, asoka must have ascended the throne at thirty, and
been consecrated at thirty-four

the fact of an interval existing between his accession and coronation seems
to be indicated in a way in the edicts which the king is always careful to
date from his abhiSeka, coronation, as if to ensure that it should not be
confused with accession. The Edicts also date from the coronation the events
of his reign.

the fact of an interval existing between his accession and coronation seems
to be indicated in a way in the edicts which the king is always careful to
date from his abhi$eka, coronation, as if to ensure that it should not be
confused with accession. the edicts also date from the coronation the events
of his reign.  

he assumed the two titles, devAnaMpiya and piyadasi, signifying respectively
"the favoured of the gods" and "of pleasing countenance," or, more
properly, "one who looks with kindness upon everything."  p.11