Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/56

54 Asoka enlarged for the second time the stûpa of the 'former Buddha' Konâkamana, or Kanakamuni, which he visited personally six years later. The relation of the cult of the 'former Buddhas' to the religion of Gautama, as already observed, is a subject concerning which very little is known.

In the twentieth 'regnal year,' 250, the sovereign presented a third costly rock-dwelling to the Âjîvikas; and in the year following,  249, made the pilgrimage to the holy places of Buddhism already noticed. The dated record is then interrupted until the twenty-seventh 'regnal year,' 243, when Pillar Edict VI, dealing with the necessity that every man should have a definite creed, was composed. The dated series of inscriptions as discovered up to the present terminates in 242 with Pillar Edict VII, comprising ten distinct sections or separate edicts, and giving a comprehensive review of the measures taken during the reign for the propagation of the Law of Piety Within the empire.

The Minor Pillar Edicts of Sârnâth, Allahabad-Kausâmbî, and Sânchî must be later in date because the position and mode of engraving the Queen's and Kausâmbî Edicts on the Allahabad pillar, which evidently was removed from Kausâmbî, indicate clearly that the short records are supplementary and posterior to the main series of Pillar Edicts on the same monument. The Kausâmbî and Sânchî documents are merely variants of the Sârnâth Edict. The Queen's Edict treats of another subject.