Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/102

100 liable to the same punishment. VVe are also told that the offence of causing the loss of a hand or an eye to an artisan was capital, the reason apparently being that skilled workmen were regarded as being specially devoted to the king’s service. Perjury and theft were ordinarily punishable by mutilation. Other instances of severity may be collected from Chânakya's treatise. In certain unspecified eases the eccentric penalty of shaving the offender's hair was inflicted. This punishment apparently was borrowed from Persia, and is one of several indications that the example of the court of the Great King inﬂuenced the customs of the Maurya sovereigns. Asoka, as already observed, seems to have maintained the stern methods of his predecessors, the only mitigation for which he claims credit being the grant of three days' respite between a capital sentence and execution. His practice of releasing convicts on the anniversary of his consecration was in accordanee with precedent.

Megasthenes, from personal experience, was able to testify that the sternness of the government kept crime in check, and that in Chandragupta's capital, with a population of 400,000, the total of the thefts reported in any one day did not exceed two hundred drachmai, or about eight pounds sterling.

The two Kalinga Edicts deserve special study as authoritative statements of Asoka's personal ideal of good government, a benevolent paternal despotism.