Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/33

Rh must be firmly established; truth must be spoken. These are the virtues of the Law of Piety which must be practised. Similarly, the teacher must be reverenced by the pupil, and towards relations proper courtesy should be shown.

This is the ancient nature of piety—this leads to length of days, and according to this men should act.'

No part of the royal teaching is inconsistent with that pithy abstract, but other documents lay stress on the duties of almsgiving, toleration of all denominations, abstention from evil-speaking, and sundry other virtues. One of them defines the Law of Piety as comprising the duties of 'compassion, almsgiving, truth, purity, gentleness, and saintliness .' Excellent moral doctrine of such a kind is inculcated over and over again, and men are invited to win both the royal favour and heavenly bliss by acting up to the precepts of the Law.

No student of the edicts can fail to be struck by the purely human and severely practical character of the teaching. The object avowedly aimed at, as in modern Burma, is the happiness of living creatures, man and beast. The teacher assumes that filial piety and the other virtues commended open the path to happiness here and hereafter, but no attempt is made to prove any proposition by reasoning, nor is any value attached to merely intellectual cognition.