Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/154

152 teaching raises men to the level of the gods. 'Ye shall be as gods.' The word data in the passage certainly means 'gods,' and not either 'kings' or 'Brahmans.' The words iyiṁ sâvaṇe, 'this proclamation' or 'precept,' refer, I believe, only to the phrase 'Let small and great exert themselves' and not to the whole document. The words 'half as much again' represent the literal version 'one-and-a-half fold.'

Controversy has raged for years around the concluding sentence, which is found more or less complete with considerable variation in the Rûpnâth, Sahasrâm, Brahmagiri, and Jaṭṭinga-Râmeśvara texts. The words and numerals are wanting in the Baâat, Siddâpura, and Maslri texts.

In the second edition of this work I followed Dr. Thomas, but now I recognize the force of the criticisms by Mr. D. R. Bhandarkar (Ind. Ant., vol. xli (1912), p. 171), and my translation substantially agrees with his and Senart's explanation.

It seems desirable to exhibit the three legible texts in a form which brings out the necessity of applying one interpretation to all:—

The ﬁrst clause clearly means that the 'proclamation' or 'precept' was 'proclaimed' or 'made' by the vuûtha or vivutha. In the second clause the bare ﬁgures 256 of Brahmagiri must be interpreted to mean the same as both the full wording of Sahasrâm and the intermediate phraseology of Rûpnâth. The numeral 256 is expressed also in words at Sahasrâm. I agree with Bhandarkar in holding that lâti is a clerical error and that one word satâ meaning 'hundreds'