Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/58

56 Having thus traced Asoka's religious history in chronological order as far as positive dates are available, we shall now proceed to discuss certain features of his policy which cannot be treated with equal chronological accuracy. Several edicts record the successive steps taken by the king to give effect to the principle of the sanctity of animal life, which was one of his cardinal doctrines. In the early years of his reign Asoka was not troubled by any scruples on the subject, and he confesses in the first Rock Edict, it is to be hoped with some exaggeration, that 'formerly in the kitchen of his Sacred and Gracious Majesty each day many hundred thousand of living creatures were slaughtered to make curries.' Afterwards, presumably from the time when he became a lay disciple, or, perhaps, from the eleventh 'regnal year,' the slaughter was reduced to 'two peacocks and one antelope—the antelope, however, not invariably.' From the thirteenth 'regnal year' all killing for the royal table was stopped. The same edict prohibits at the capital the celebration of animal sacrifices and merry-makings involving the use of meat, but in the provinces such practices apparently continued to be lawful. The suppression of the Royal Hunt some two years later than his conversion marked an intermediate stage in the monarch's growing devotion to his favourite doctrine. The final development of his