ART. XIX.—The Authorship of the Piyadasi Inscriptions. by VINCENT A

481 ART. XIX.—The Authorship of the Piyadasi Inscriptions. By VINCENT A. SMITH, M.R.A.S., late of the Indian Civil Service. THE numerous inscriptions on rocks and stone pillars which purport to have been issued by command of a sovereign named Priyadarsin or Piyadasi, and a few which omit the sovereign's name while using the title specially affected by King Piyadasi, obviously form a distinct class among Indian epigraphical records and belong approximately to one period. The exceptional value and the extreme interest of these inscriptions have always, since their first discovery, been recognized by all students of Indian history and antiquities, and for nearly seventy years the Piyadasi class of inscriptions has been studied and discussed by eminent scholars. Before these invaluable records can be fully and confidently utilized for the elucidation of the dark places of Indian history, two preliminary problems must be definitely solved. These problems are, firstly, Were all the Piyadasi inscriptions issued by one sovereign, or by two or more sovereigns ? and secondly, Who was Piyadasi, and what is his place in history? Having recently undertaken to write a book on the subject of Asoka, I was compelled to deal with both these problems, and to satisfy myself as to the true solution of both. Although this investigation was undertaken as a preliminary study for my book, and primarily for my own satisfaction, competent authority has assured me that it may be of interest to other people, and I therefore venture to lay it before this Society. General consent identifies Piyadasi with the Emperor Asoka Maurya in the third century B.C., and ascribes most, if not all, of the Piyadasi class of inscriptions to Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 21 May 2018 at 10:07:45, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00028707 482 AUTHORSHIP OF THE PIYADASI INSCRIPTIONS. a single sovereign. But the consent, though general, is not absolutely unanimous. Doubts have been frequently expressed, and various writers, including some distinguished scholars, have doubted both the unity of the authorship of the inscriptions and the identity of Piyadasi with Asoka. A pamphlet by Babu P. C. Mukherjl, which was reviewed in our Journal last year by Professor Rhys Davids, and thus introduced to the consideration of scholars, proposed startling theories in opposition to the views commonly accepted, and the arguments adduced by the author of that pamphlet are sufficiently plausible to raise doubts in the minds of readers who have not specially studied the subject. The present time, therefore, seems opportune for the examination of the two problems above stated. When I undertook the investigation I approached it with an absolutely open and impartial mind, and I thought it advisable to see first of all if the inscriptions themselves could solve the question of unity of authorship, irrespective of the question of the identity of Piyadasi and Asoka Maurya. I shall therefore first discuss the question of unity of authorship on the assumption that we do not know who Piyadasi was or where he lived. The known inscriptions of the Piyadasi class, nearly all of which purport to have been issued by the authority of Piyadasi, may be conveniently arranged in eight groups, namely:— I.—The Fourteen Rock Edicts, of which recensions have been discovered at seven localities, namely:— 1. Shahbazgarhi (Kapurdigiri), in the Yusufzai territory, north-east of Peshawar in the Panjab ; 2. Mansera in the Hazara District, Panjab; 3. Kalsi, in the Dehra Dun District of the North-Western Provinces; 4. Dhauli, in the Katak District of Orissa ; 5. Jaugada, in the Ganjam District of the Madras Presidency; Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 21 May 2018 at 10:07:45, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00028707 AUTHORSHIP OF THE PIYADASI INSCRIPTIONS. 483 6. Girnar, near Jiinagarh in Kathiawar, Bombay Presi- dency ; and 7. Sopara, in the Thana District, north of Bombay. II.—The Two Kalinga (also known as the Detached, or Separate) Rock Edicts, at— 1. Dhauli, two edicts, and 2. Jaugada, two edicts. III.—The Two Minor Rock Edicts, at— 1. Bairat, in the Alwar State, Rajputana; 2. Rupnath, in the Jabalpur District, Central Provinces; 3. Sahasram, in the Shahabad District, Bengal; and 4. Siddapura, in the Maisur (Mysore) State, three copies. The Siddapura copies contain two edicts, namely, a variant of the edict found in different forms at Bairat, Rupnath, and Sahasram, and a second edict peculiar to Siddapura. IV.—The Bhabra Edict, at Bhabra, near Bairat in Alwar State, Rajputana. V.—The Three Cave Dedications, in three caves at the Barabar hill, near Gaya, Bengal. VI.—The Two Tarai Memorial Inscriptions, on pillars at— 1. Nigall Sagar, near Nigliva in the Nepalese Tarai, north of the BastI District, in the North- Western Provinces ; 2. Rummindel {alias Padaria), in the Nepalese Tarai, north of Dulha in the Basti District, and about thirteen miles south-east of the Nigall Sagar pillar. VII.—The Seven Pillar Edicts, on six pillars, namely:— 1. Delhi-Topra {alias Delhi-Sivalik, or Firoz Shah's Lat, or Delhi I), at ruined city of Flrozabad, near Delhi, removed from Topra, near Ambala (Umballa). The important Seventh Edict is found on this pillar only;x 1 The older writers erroneously divided this edict into two, Nos. VII and VIII. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 21 May 2018 at 10:07:45, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00028707 484 AUTHORSHIP OF THE PIYADASI INSCRIPTIONS. 2. Delbi-Mirath (-Meerut, alias Delhi II), on the ridge at Delhi, removed from Mirath ; 3. Allahabad, in the Fort; 4. Lauriya-Araraj {alias Radhia), near a village named Lauriya, and a temple of Araraj - Mahadeo in the Muzaffarpur District, Bengal; 5. Lauriya-Nandangarh(-Navandgarh, alias Mathia), near another village named Lauriya and the great mound of Nandangarh, in the Champaran District, Bengal; 6. Rampurwa, near the village of that name in the north- eastern corner of the Champaran District. VIII.—The Supplementary Pillar Edicts, on pillars, at— 1. Allahabad, where two short edicts, the Queen's and the Kausambi, have been added to Pillar Edicts, Nos. I to VI; and at 2. Sanci, partly identical with the Kausambi Edict at Allahabad. The total number of separate documents extant may be reckoned as 34, namely: 14 Rock Edicts, 2 Kalinga Edicts (the Jaugada pair differs very little from the Dhauli pair), 2 Minor Rock Edicts (the recensions of No. 1 being Tariants), 1 Bhabra Edict, forming a class by itself, 3 Cave Dedications, 2 Tarai Memorial Inscriptions, 7 Pillar Edicts, and 3 Supplementary Pillar Edicts. Important variations occur in the different recensions of the Fourteen Rock Edicts and the Minor Rock Edicts. The variations in the six recensions of Pillar Edicts I-VI are unimportant. Edict No. VII, the most important of the Pillar series, being found on the Delhi-Topra pillar only, has no variants. Individual phrases and turns of expression are so often repeated in the Piyadasi inscriptions that the hasty reader is apt to suppose that all the documents are much the same, but in reality each of the Fourteen Rock Edicts and each of the Seven Pillar Edicts has a perfectly distinct subject- matter. For example, the subject of the First Pillar Edict Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 21 May 2018 at 10:07:45, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00028707 AUTHORSHIP OP THE PIYADASI INSCRIPTIONS. 485 is ' the principles of government,' that of the second, ' the royal example,' and that of the third, ' self-examination.' The Fourteen Rock Edicts are dated in the thirteenth and fourteenth years of the reign of Devanampiya Piyadasi Raja, His Sacred Majesty King Piyadasi, counting from his solemn coronation {abhiseka), and in their completed form were published in the later of those two years. Each of the fourteen edicts opens with the full royal title as given above, but in the body of the documents the abbreviated form Devanampiya, His Sacred Majesty, is sometimes used by itself. A momentary digression concerning the title Devdnampii/a may, perhaps, be pardoned. King Piyadasi in most of his inscriptions uses it as his official style, and it is also used in the three brief inscriptions in the Nagarjuni caves of King Dasaratha, who, according to the Puranas, was a grandson of Asoka Maurya. In Ceylon it was used by Tissa (Tishya), the contemporary, according to the chronicles, of Asoka Maurya, and by at least one later sovereign. So far as I am aware, these are the only known examples of the use of the compound as a royal title, but the beginning of the Eighth Rock Edict shows that it was also used by several of the predecessors of Piyadasi. The subject of that edict is ' Pious Tours,' and Piyadasi observes, in the Kalsl text, that " in times past 'Their Sacred Majesties' {devanampiya) used to go out on so-called pleasure-tours," but that he has changed all that. In the Girnar, Dhauli, and Jaugada recensions the word rdjdno, 'kings,' is substituted for the plural devdnampiya, which latter must, therefore, be necessarily interpreted in this passage as an equivalent of rdjdno. When M. Senart's book, " Les Inscriptions de Piyadasi," was published in 1881 the only available text reading devanampiya was that of Kalsl.

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