Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/214

212 growth of piety among men and the more complete abstention from killing animate beings and from the sacrificial slaughter of living creatures.

So for this purpose has this been recorded, in order that my sons and descendants (lit. "great grandsons") may conform thereto, and by thus conforming may win both this World and the next.

When I had been consecrated twenty-seven years I had this scripture of the Law Written.'

X. Concerning this His Sacred Majesty saith:—

'This scripture of the Law of Piety, wheresoever pillars of stone or tables of stone exist, must there be reco1-ded so that it may long endure.'

Comment

General.—This edict, the longest and most important of the whole collection, is extant only on a single monument, the Delhi-Topra pillar. Part, which is inscribed all round the shaft, used to be erroneously described as a separate edict, No. VIII. The text, happily, is almost perfect, and the difficulties of interpretation are few. Many of the ideas and phrases, being repeated from the earlier inscriptions, have been sufficiently explained already. The subject is a comprehensive review of Asoka's religious efforts within his empire up to the twenty-eighth year of his reign. Although he lived some nine or ten years longer, and certain minor inscriptions to be noticed presently belong to. those years, no later precise date is recorded.

Asoka, who speaks in his own person, divided his review into ten sections, each prefaced by the formula 'Thus saith His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King,' slightly abbreviated in some cases. All persons concerned are addressed, whether officials or the general public. In my last edition I expressed surprise that no mention is made of the foreign missions, but I now perceivetbe reason for the omission to be that the emperor, who was addressing only his own subjects, conﬁned himself to recounting the principal measures which he had taken for propagating Dhaṁma, or the Law of Piety, throughout his