Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/59

Rh policy in this matter is defined by Pillar Edict V, dated 243, which lays down an elaborate code of regulations restricting the slaughter and mutilation of animals throughout the empire. Those regulations were imposed on all classes of the population without distinction of creed, social customs, or religious sentiment. A long list was published of animals the slaughter of which was absolutely prohibited, and other rules prescribed restrictions on the slaughter of animals permitted to be killed, and prohibited or limited the practice of different kinds of mutilation. Asoka could not venture to absolutely forbid the castration of bulls, he-goats, rams and boars, but he regarded the practice as unholy, and prohibited it on all holy days, amounting to about a quarter of the year. The branding of horses and cattle was treated in the same spirit. On fifty-six days the capture or sale of fish was prohibited, and on the same days, even in game preserves, animals might not be destroyed. The caponing of cocks was declared to be absolutely unlawful at all times.

The practical working of such minutely detailed rules must have been almost intolerably vexatious, and they cannot fail to have pressed with painful harshness upon people who believed sacrifice on certain days to be necessary to salvation and on many classes of the working population. The insistence on the display of energy by the Censors and all classes of officials in carrying out the imperial commands must have produced a crowd of informers and an immense