Appendix C: On The Early Indian Inscriptions
Excerpt from Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter With Early Buddhism in Central Asia
by Christopher I. Beckwith
2015
Librarian’s Comment:
Don’t be fooled by Christopher Beckwith’s designation of his revolutionary essay, “On the Early Indian Inscriptions” as “Appendix C” to his recently-published “Greek Buddha.” If anything, he should be chided for relegating this essential material to its humble position as the final section of the book, when its thesis should be jumping off the back cover in boldface type: “Blows the Lid off the Ashokan Pillar Scam that Has Held a Nation in Thrall for Two Hundred Years!” Because, as Beckwith gently demonstrates, there is far, far less here than meets the eye. Ashoka’s very existence is in question, and is derived circularly from the pillars themselves, after distorting the “evidence” that can be gleaned from them. The purported historical references to Ashoka come from a Ceylonese book of mythology. All of the well-shaped, finely finished pillars are marked with the name of a different man altogether, which is not Ashoka, but rather Devanampriya Piyardarsi. The Lumbini pillar is an obvious fraud, a very short declaration of recent vintage composed from an anachronistic salad of alphabets. The Seventh Pillar edict, likewise, is clearly a late creation that compiles phrases from other pillars in an obvious effort to resemble them. The rock edicts are evidence of nothing more than the penchant of irresponsible improvisers to attach the name of Ashoka to every petroglyph in India. Why has Beckwith hidden all this in an “appendix,” i.e., a disposable appendage? Because when you barbeque sacred cows, you do it in the back yard, not on your front lawn!
Of foremost importance, there is the subject of Indian Chronology....In the hands of many Orientalists, India has lost (or has been cheated out of) a period of 10-12 centuries in its political and literary life, by the assumption of a faulty Synchronism of Chandragupta Maurya and Sandrocottus of the Greek works, and all that can be said against that "Anchor-Sheet of Indian Chronology" has been said in this Introduction...
[T]he history of Magadha is particularly relevant, for it is at Magadha, 'Chandragupta' and 'Asoka' ruled, and it is on these names that the modern computation of dates has been based for everything relating to India's literary history, and it is those two names that make the heroes of the theory of Anchor Sheet of Indian Chronology....
It was Sir William Jones, the Founder and President of the Society instituted in Bengal for inquiry into the History and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences and Literature of Asia, who died on 27th April 1794, that suggested for the first time an identification to the notice of scholars. In his 'Tenth Anniversary Discourse,' delivered by him on 28th February 1793, on "Asiatic History, Civil and Natural," referred to the so-called discovery by him of the identity of Chandragupta, the Founder of the Maurya Dynasty of the Kings Magadha, with Sandrocottus of the Greek writers of Alexander's adventures, thus:... I cannot help mentioning a discovery which accident threw in my way, though my proofs must be reserved for an essay, which I have destined for the fourth volume of your Transactions. To fix the situation of that Palibothra, (for there may have been several of the name) which was visited and described by Megasthenes, had always appeared a very difficult problem, for, though it could not have been Prayaga where no ancient metropolis ever stood, nor Canyacubja which has no epithet at all resembling the word used by the Greeks, nor Gaur, otherwise called Lacshmanavati, which all know to be a town comparatively modern, yet we could not confidently decide that it was Pataliputra, though names and most circumstances nearly correspond, because that renowned capital extended from the confluence of the Sone and the Ganges to the site of Patna, while Palibothra stood at the junction of the Ganges and Erranaboas, which the accurate M. D'Anville had pronounced to be "Yamuna", but this only difficulty was removed when I found in a Classical Sanskrit book near two thousand years old, that Hiranyabahu or golden-armed, which the Greeks changed to Erranaboas, or the river with a lovely murmur, was in fact another name for the Sona itself, though Megasthenes from ignorance or inattention, has named them separately.1 [Asiatic Researches, IV. 10-11.] This discovery led to another of greater moment, for Chandragupta, who, from a military adventurer, became like Sandracottus, the sovereign of Upper Hindustan, actually fixed the seat of his empire at Pataliputra, where he received ambassadors from foreign princes, and was no other than that very Sandracottus who concluded a treaty with Seleucus Nicator, so that we have solved another problem to which we before alluded...
Earlier in the same discourse Sir William had mentioned his authorities for the statement that Chandragupta became sovereign of upper Hindusthan, with his Capital at Pataliputra. "A most beautiful poem," said he "by Somadeva, comprising a long chain of instructive and agreeable stories, begins with the famed revolution at Pataliputra by the murder of king Nanda with his eight sons, and the usurpation of Chandragupta, and the same revolution is the subject of a tragedy in Sanskrit entitled 'The Coronation of Chandra.'"1 [Ibid 6.] Thus he claimed to have identified Palibothra with Pataliputra and Sandrokottus with Chandragupta, and to have determined 300 BC "in round numbers" as a certain epoch between two others which he called the conquest of Silan by Rama: "1200 BC," and the death of Vikramaditya at Ujjain in 57 BC.
In the Discourse referred to, Sir William barely stated his discovery, adding "that his proofs must be reserved" for a subsequent essay, but he died before that essay could appear.
-- "Sandrocottus", Excerpt from "History of Classical Sanskrit Literature", by Kavyavinoda, Sahityaratnakara M. Krishnamachariar, M.A., M.I., Ph.D., Member of the Royal Asiatic Society of London (Of the Madras Judicial Service), Assisted by His Son M. Srinivasachariar, B.A., B.L., Advocate, Madras, 1937
Diodotus became Seleucid satrap (governor) of Bactria during Antiochus II's reign, thus about a generation after the original establishment of Seleucid control over the region .... Archaeological evidence for the period comes largely from excavations of the city of Ai-Khanoum, where this period saw the expansion of irrigation networks, the construction and expansion of civic buildings, and some military activity...
At some point, Diodotus seceded from the Seleucid empire, establishing his realm as an independent kingdom, known in modern scholarship as the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom. The event is mentioned briefly by the Roman historian Justin:Diodotus, the governor of the thousand cities of Bactria, defected and proclaimed himself king; all the other people of the Orient followed his example and seceded from the Macedonians [i.e. the Seleucids].
— Justin Epitome of Pompeius Trogus 41.4...
The limited archaeological evidence reveals no signs of discontinuity or destruction in this period. The transition from Seleucid rule to independence thus seems to have been accomplished peacefully....
The literary sources stress the prosperity of the new kingdom. Justin calls it "the extremely prosperous empire of the thousand cities of Bactria.", while the geographer Strabo says:The Greeks who caused Bactria to revolt grew so powerful on account of the fertility of the country that they became masters, not only of Ariana, but also of India, as Apollodorus of Artemita says: and more tribes were subdued by them than by Alexander... Their cities were Bactra (also called Zariaspa, through which flows a river bearing the same name and emptying into the Oxus), and Darapsa, and several others.
— Strabo Geography 11.11.1
[A]rchaeological evidence makes clear that goods and people continued to move between Bactria and the Seleucid realm....
Reign: c. 255 or 245 BC – c. 235 BC
-- Diodotus I, by Wikipedia
One has to recall that after the Hyphasis mutiny, Alexander gave up his plans to march further east, and to commemorate his Indian expedition he erected twelve massive altars of dressed stone. Arrian writes:He then divided the army into brigades, which he ordered to prepare twelve altars to equal in height the highest military towers, and to exceed them in point of breadth, to serve as thank offerings to the gods who had led him so far as a conqueror, and also as a memorial of his own labours. After erecting the altars he offered sacrifice upon them with the customary rites, and celebrated a gymnastic and equestrian contest. (V.29.1-2)
Curiously, unlike most writers who place the altars on the right bank of the river, Pliny places them on the left or the eastern bank:The Hyphasis was the limit of the marches of Alexander, who, however, crossed it, and dedicated altars on the further bank. (Plin. HN 6.21)
Pliny’s crucial hint suggests a reappraisal of the riddle of the altars. Precisely how far east had Alexander and his men come? Although Bunbury holds that the location of the altars cannot be regarded as known even approximately, the Indian evidence sheds new light. Masson places the altars at the united stream of the Hyphasis and Sutlez. McCrindle also writes that the Sutlez marked the limit of Alexander’s march eastward; and this is precisely the locality from where Feroze Shah brought the pillar to Delhi.
-- An Altar of Alexander Now Standing at Delhi [EXPANDED VERSION], by Ranajit Pal, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, India. January, 2006
Altar of Zeus, from Pergamon. c. 175 BCE. Marble, reconstructed and restored. (Staatliche Museen, Berlin)
-- Pergamon [The Pergamon Altar of Zeus], Hellenistic Period: c. 323-31 BCE, by Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe, Greek Art & Archaeology, arthistoryresources.net, 175 BCE
Appendix C: ON THE EARLY INDIAN INSCRIPTIONS
The Major Inscriptions of the Mauryan period, which are explicitly and repeatedly declared to have been erected by a king known as Devanampriya Priyadarsi,1
[1 However, the so-called Seventh Pillar Edict on the Delhi-Topra pillar is spurious. It is discussed at the end of this appendix.]
are the very first inscriptions known to have been created in India. They are also the first datable examples of actual Indian writing.2
[2 It remains uncertain if the Harappan inscriptions represent writing. Even if they do, they remain undeciphered and had no descendant in any later Indian writing system.]
The religious contents of these inscriptions are very important sources for the "popular" variety of Early Buddhism and are discussed at length in Chapter Three.
However, the Major Inscriptions are generally believed to be only a subset of a much larger set of well over two dozen Mauryan inscriptions, large and small, most of which are explicitly concerned with Buddhism -- not Early Buddhism, but Normative Buddhism. Virtually all of them -- that is to say, all inscriptions of any kind in early Brahmi script and Prakrit language, including the Major Inscriptions and the others -- are now attributed not only to the Mauryan period, but specifically to a Mauryan ruler known from traditional Indian "histories" as Asoka.3
[3 E.g., Norman (2012), Salomon (1998), Falk (2006), Olivelle (2012), generally with a few extremely minor quibbles at most. The most significant exception is Falk (2006: 58), who concludes regarding the "Second Minor Rock Edict" (one of the synoptic, explicitly Buddhist edicts) that "analysis of its content ... seems to indicate that it was not Asoka who produced this text." (He takes the "First Minor Rock Edict" to be by Asoka.) Olivelle (2012: 158), following and citing Falk, says that the Minor Rock Edicts "are problematic in that they exist in many versions and were subjected to several editorial interventions in different places". He also questions whether all the texts had "the same author" or "multiple authors". Unfortunately he does not pursue these insights in any substantial way in his article, and actually treats all the inscriptions as being by Asoka. Just about the only other hedges that have been expressed relate to a small number of short inscriptions, which have sometimes been ascribed to later authors. Asoka's grandson Dasaratha is explicitly credited with the Nagarjuni Hills inscriptions (Hultzsch 1925: xxviii; Salomon 1998: 76, n16; Falk 2006: 276, q.v. for the texts and translations), as already established by Prinsep in the nineteenth century (Salomon 1998: 208). Despite their extremely close connection to the Barabar Hill Cave inscriptions of "king Devanampiya" (Hultzsch 1925: xxvii), the latter are still generally attributed unquestioningly to Asoka (e.g., Salomon 1998: 140; Falk 2006: 266-268), but Asoka is actually never mentioned. Both probably belong to Dasaratha -- whose historicity and chronology, however, depend wholly on the same pseudo-historical sources responsible for the questionable historicity and chronology of Asoka. It is probable that he needs to be downdated along with Asoka, as suggested below.]
He is identified in these "histories" as the grandson of the dynasty's founder, Chandragupta. All of the inscriptions are thus usually known today as the "Asoka (or Asokan) inscriptions".
Unfortunately, this determination is extremely problematic at best. Absolutely no careful scientific epigraphical or palaeographical study of the inscriptions themselves has ever been done in the century and a half since their first decipherment. No one knows what such a study would reveal. Careful preliminary examination indicates that the traditional view is partly or even wholly incorrect. It is thus necessary to determine why the inscriptions might have been erected, which among them are genuine Mauryan inscriptions, which (if any) were authored by "Asoka", and when they were erected.
THE BACKGROUND OF THE MAURYAN INSCRIPTIONS
There is unquestionable Old Persian influence on the Major Inscriptions, including language (Old Persian ni-pis "to write"); textual formulae -- most notably the usual third-person introduction "King x says" followed by the king's proclamation in first person;4 the Kharosthi alphabet (derived from Persian Imperial Aramaic script) used in the northwestern inscriptions, the area formerly under Achaemenid Persian rule; and the "Persepolitan" (Achaemenid Persian) style of the pillars and the capitals that graced them. All of this goes back to the period when "Sindhu and Gandhara belonged to the Persian Empire."5
[4 Olivelle (2012: 166). This is also noted by others arguing that the Mauryan edicts were based on Persian models, e.g., Hultzsch (1925).]
[5 Hultzsch (1925: xlii). The Achaemenid Persian presence there is firmly established by the Persian royal inscriptions and by provincial travel reports to and from Gandhara in the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, as noted in the Prologue, as well as by numerous Achaemenid sites in Sindh and Gandhara (J. Choksy, p.c., 2013).]
One must add to these points the simple fact of creating monumental inscriptions at all, which was done for the first time in India, in blatantly Persian style, on both rocks and columns. They were erected along royal roads built and provided with rest houses, exactly as the early Achaemenids had done. On these roads Achaemenid royal emissaries made annual "tours of inspection"6
[Xenophon (Cyropaedia VIII, 6.16) says, "every year a progress of inspection is made by an officer at the head of an army, to help any satrap who may require aid, or bring the insolent to their senses ... "(Meadows 2005: 185).]
-- exactly as the Mauryans were to do, as we know from the Major Inscriptions themselves. Moreover, just as the inscriptions of Darius are a litany of praise and thanks to Ahura Mazda (God), the inscriptions of Devanampriya Priyadarsi are a litany of praise and thanks -- not to Brahma (God)7
[The earliest information on the Indian Brahmanists' conception of God is given by Megasthenes, q.v. Chapter Two.]
but to the Dharma.8
[Olivelle (2012: 174) says, "I propose that in the case of Asoka's civil religion, the place of 'God' is taken by 'Dharma'." However, he then states that "like 'God', Dharma was a vacuous concept into which individuals and groups could read whatever content they desired." This is highly unlikely, as are his and other scholars' arguments in favor of Asoka's view of Dharma as "civil religion". Against it may be mentioned the regular Greek translation of dharma as eusebeia "piety, holiness", which he cites (Olivelle 2012: 175). Interestingly, Dharma is translated into Aramaic once as qsyt' (qassita) 'truth' in the Kandahar II/III Inscription (Ito, 1966), and Clement of Alexandria says that Buddhists (Sramattas) are those "who practiced the truth (ten aletheian askousi)" (Parker 2012: 320). Significantly, 'my Dharma' is translated in the Aramaic inscription from Taxila (Parker 2012: 325n24) as dty 'my data', using the Old Persian word for 'divine law' used by Darius and others for the "Law of God".
Megasthenes transformed India from a site of freakish difference and symmetrical opposition, to be wondered at or assimilated by imperial expansion, into a space of similarity and submerged cultural identity. India is now good to think with. The land has become an analogue of the Seleucid state and the Indica a text for working through issues of Seleucid state formation.
While Chandragupta Maurya's multiethnic, polyglot, expansionist kingdom certainly resembled the Seleucid state in outline and probably generated parallel mechanisms of territorial control, Megasthenes' ethnography went beyond this to emphasize consonance with the Seleucid world: certain of India's characteristics, appearing for the first time in ethnography, resemble Seleucid state structures too closely to be anything but observations or fabrications of similarity. The strongest case is the existence of autonomous, democratically governed cities within Megasthenes' Indian kingdom. The coexistence of independent and dependent cities within the same realm is one of the most striking characteristics of the Seleucid empire; it is unattested for the Mauryan kingdom. Megasthenes seems to have deliberately constructed a parallel system of irregular political sovereignty to better support the analogy between the two states. Other parallels include royal land ownership, the capital-on-the-river, the construction of roads and milestones, and various duties of the monarch.
-- Chapter 1: India – Diplomacy and Ethnography at the Mauryan Empire, Excerpt from "The Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire", by Paul J. Kosmin
Environmentalist Protecting Migratory Birds in Northern Iran
The duck test is a form of abductive reasoning. This is its usual expression:If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
The test implies that a person can identify an unknown subject by observing that subject's habitual characteristics. It is sometimes used to counter abstruse arguments that something is not what it appears to be.
-- Duck test, by Wikipedia
Olivelle (2012: 170-171) states flatly, "we can dismiss the early view that Asoka's Dharma was, in fact, the Buddhist Dharma, and we can agree fully with Romila Thapar ... that 'Asoka's Dhamma did not conform to the religious policy of any one of the existing religions of his time'." This claim is predicated upon the belief that the "religions of his time" are in fact well known, but that is not the case. The received view of "the existing religions of ['Asoka's'] time" has hitherto been based exclusively on the Normative Buddhism of Saka-Kushan or later sources, which has been demonstrated to be, in large part, a development of those or later centuries.] This is one of the strongest indications that the ruler's Dharma was, in fact, a form of Early Buddhism, in which the structural place for God is apparent, but it is unoccupied.
It is well known that some of these Persian-style pillars of the Mauryas were left uninscribed. It seems not to have been noticed, however, that those which were inscribed were done in a very curious fashion. Specifically, the pillar inscriptions are not inscribed around the cylindrical columns, as might perhaps be expected, but are instead placed in geographically oriented north, south, east, and west "faces".9
[Hultzsch (1925: xvi, 119-137); e.g., the Delhi-Topra pillar, Edicts I-VI. The so-called Seventh Pillar Edict, most of which is inscribed all around the circumference of the column, is found only on the Delhi-Topra column, and is in this and other respects a glaringly obvious later addition to the authentic synoptic edicts already inscribed on the stone. This is clearest in the rubbings in Hultzsch (1925), but is visible upon careful inspection of available photographs in Sircar (1957: the second plate between pages 24 and 25) and Falk (2006: 216 figure 4, 217 figure 6). Olivelle (2012: 160-161) says that on the Allahabad Pillar, "the inscriptions were carved in a circular manner while the pillar was erect; the same is true with regard to P[illar] E[dict] 7 at [Delhi-]Topra" (i.e., the pillar now in Delhi and known as the Delhi-Topra pillar). Unfortunately, neither the very poor photographs in Falk (2006) nor any posted online allow one to actually see very clearly how the Allahabad Pillar is inscribed, but close examination of the rubbing in Hultzsch (1925: 156) shows that the text does not in fact run circularly all around the column, though it does go partway around (how far is unclear). There is a space at the beginning and end of the lines in the rubbing; which shows that the lines do not continue in a continuous string the way the "Seventh Pillar Edict" on the Delhi-Topra column uniquely does. Salomon (1998: 139) remarks, "The Allahabad-Kosam pillar contains, in addition to the six principal edicts, two brief additional inscriptions", namely the "Queen's Edict" and "the so-called Schism Edict, addressed to the mahamatras at Kosambi (Kausambi), which refers to the punishment to be inflicted on monks or nuns who cause schisms within the Buddhist samgha." Examination of the rubbing in Hultzsch (1925) of the "Queen's Edict" on the same column clearly shows that it too was not written all the way around it, but in a panel with rather short lines.]
Together it is clear that the pillars were erected first, uninscribed, and that the inscriptions were added later.
The so-called Seventh Pillar Edict on the Delhi-Topra pillar actually mentions the existence of blank pillars. The existence of uninscribed pillars has inexplicably been taken by Hultzsch, and evidently by subsequent scholars, to mean that the Buddhist Inscriptions -- which are overtly Normative Buddhist -- are earlier than the Major Inscriptions. The elaborate theory of Norman (2012) claims, among other things, that the Pillar Edicts were inscribed while horizontal, before erection; he does not mention the uninscribed pillars, nor the fact that such uninscribed pillars are actually mentioned explicitly in the "Seventh Pillar Edict" as still existing when that inscription was added to the Delhi-Topra column, nor that some still exist today. He also claims that the texts of all of the inscriptions were written out on perishable material in the capital, Pataliputra and sent out to the provinces with "cover letters" that were supposedly "not meant to be published",10
[This is an ad hoc proposal based on speculation; the differences are surely there in many cases because the texts were recast by the inscribers, while some of them are clear forgeries.]
despite the fact that Megasthenes visited Pataliputra in 305-304 BC and remarked that the Indians in that country did not know writing, and despite the fact that no "Asokan Inscription" has ever been found there; the written texts were then translated into local dialects, or for the Pillar Edicts, copied verbatim.11
[Norman (2012: 53; 56-57).]
While the closeness of the synoptic Pillar Edicts supports Norman's idea of a written exemplar, the synoptic Major Rock Edict inscriptions at least were undoubtedly memorized orally in sections (the "Edicts") and inscribed in the local dialect or language, thus accounting for most variations.
Now we must consider who first erected the pillars, and why, and who ordered some of them to be inscribed.
The absolutely unprecedented, specifically Persian character of the earliest Indian inscriptions,12
[This is obvious and unquestionable. See the excellent, careful overview in Falk (2006: 139-141), which is followed by a careful description of the pillars themselves, their materials, mode of production and erection, etc.]
as well as the complete failure of post-Mauryan Indians to erect inscriptions that are even remotely similar to them, as frequently noted by scholars, tells us that their creator must have been impressed by things Persian through firsthand experience. He must have personally seen monumental Persian inscriptions -- which are mainly on cliff faces or stone slabs -- and either read them or heard someone read aloud what they said.13
[If he had travelled from Gandhara to Persepolis in the years before Alexander's invasion, he would have seen many impressive monuments.]
It would therefore seem likeliest by far that the pillars themselves were erected, uninscribed, by the dynastic founder Chandragupta (in Greek, Sandracottos), who is known from Greek historical sources to have had direct personal and diplomatic contact of different kinds with the Greeks and Persians, and was undoubtedly influenced strongly by them; but they were inscribed by one of his successors.
Contradictions in the texts themselves indicate that all of the Mauryan inscriptions could not have been erected by the same person,14
[Falk (2006: 58), on the Second Minor Rock Edict; Olivelle (2012: 158).]
but it is clear -- and explicit in those very texts -- that all of the genuine Major Inscriptions were in fact erected by one and the same Mauryan ruler, Devanampriya Priyadarsi. It is most plausible, on the basis of the chronology inferrable from the inscriptions' record of contemporaneous Hellenistic rulers' names, and on other historical grounds, that he is to be identified with Chandragupta's [Sandracottus's] son, Amitrochates (according to Greek sources) or Bindusara (according to traditional Indian accounts). He actually proclaimed the authentic edicts of the Major Inscriptions on rocks and pillars and is responsible for the deeds recorded in them. Both Amitrochates ~ Bindusara and his father had close political relations with the Greeks, as we know very well from Greek sources; both are historical and datable, if only somewhat roughly. The contents of these genuine, dated inscriptions are discussed in Chapter Three.
As for the minor monuments henceforth referred to as the "Buddhist Inscriptions", including the Minor Rock Edicts and Minor Pillar Edicts, a casual inspection of the inscriptional evidence and the scholarship on them might indicate that they were inscribed by Chandragupta's grandson Asoka, since the author of the First Minor Rock Edict is explicitly named "Devanampriya Asoka" in two copies of the text.15
[Norman (2012: 41); see also the discussion by Falk (2006: 58).]
However, as shown below, they could not in fact have been inscribed until much later.16
[See below on this issue, and for which texts belong to which category.]
Unfortunately, we do not have rich, reliable historical sources for the Mauryas. We have only extremely tenuous information about them -- most of it about "Asoka" -- from very late Buddhist "histories", which are in large part fantasy-filled hagiographies having nothing to do with actual human events in the real world. Moreover, as Max Deeg has argued, not only did the inscriptions remain in public view for centuries, but their script and language remained legible to any literate person through the Kushan period (at least to ca. AD 250). This strongly suggests that the inscriptions influenced the legendary "histories" of Buddhism that began to develop at about that time,17
[Deeg (2009); cf. Salomon (1998: 31).]
That would explain why the story of Devanampriya Priyadarsi's conquest of Kalinga, his subsequent remorse, and his turning to the Dharma is all repeated in the Buddhist "histories", though they attribute the events to "Asoka", who is said to be the grandson of Chandragupta.
Despite the deep learning and care many scholars have taken with the texts, some very striking irregularities in some of the inscriptions appear not to have been noticed. Hultzsch, author of the classic monumental edition of the inscriptions, rightly notes that the Seventh Pillar Edict on the Delhi-Topra column is "unique"18
[Hultzsch (1925: xvi).]
because unlike all the other Pillar Edicts, which (like the Major Rock Edicts) exist in synoptic copies, it is only found in a single exemplar. Salomon correctly remarks that it is "the longest of all the Asokan edicts. For the most part, it summarizes and restates the contents of the other pillar edicts, and to some extent those of the major rock edicts as well."19
[Salomon (1998: 139).]
Hultzsch says nothing at all about the inscription's date except to note that "the seventh pillar edict at Delhi-Topra was added in the next year" of Asoka's reign after the inscription of the first six Pillar Edicts. 20
[Hultzsch (1925: xlviii).]
Norman similarly remarks, "The failure of this edict to reach other cities [than Topra] is one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Asokan administration."21
[Quoted by Olivelle (2012: 180n8).]
Hultzsch's unquestioning acceptance of the "Seventh Pillar Edict" on the Delhi-Topra column is unlike his discussion of the Allahabad-Kosam Pillar, which he says has "four strata of literary records", of which the first consists of the "original inscriptions of Asoka, viz.: (a) the first six edicts of the Delhi-Topra pillar; (b) the so-called 'Queen's edict' ... ; [and] (c) the so-called 'Kausambi edict' ... ". 22
[Hultzsch (1925: xix).]
He also mentions, "The Barabar Hill inscriptions record a grant of caves to the Ajlvikas, but it is not absolutely certain whether the donor was identical to Asoka."23
[Hultzsch (1925: (xlixn1).]
Near the end of his chapter 4, "Asoka's Conversion", he says, "It must still be noted that the Calcutta-Bairat rock-inscription24
[Formerly also known as the "Bhabra" or "Bhabru" inscription.]
or 'letter to the Samgha' seems to be earlier than all the other rock and pillar edicts. The references to a few Buddhist tracts in this inscription suggest that after his visit to the Samgha, and before starting on tour, he was engaged in studying the sacred literature."25
[Hultzsch (1925: xlvii). These two sentences are more than usually astounding.]
Salomon comments that the unique text of the "Seventh Pillar Edict" is an "important early instance" of an inscription shedding "some light on the complex problems of the formation and history of the various Buddhist canons."26
[Salomon (1998: 138, 241-242).]
Although he notes -- as others have before him -- that the Nigali Sagar Inscription and the Lumbini Inscription "are different in content and character from Asoka's other edicts", he ascribes this to the ruler's state of mind (much as is done by Hultzsch and nearly everyone else since). He notes that the former inscription "records the king's visit to the site and his expansion of the stupa of the Buddha Konakamana there", while the latter "celebrates the site as the birthplace of the Buddha and commemorates the king's visit there."27
[Salomon (1998: 140).]
The latter inscriptions thus have been used, and continue to be used, as "proof" of this or that idea about "early" Buddhism, even by careful scholars such as Bareau,28
[Bareau (1995: 216-218). He concludes with another remark about "the surprising rarity of canonical texts which locate the birth of the Blessed One at Lumbini or which mention the Buddha Konakamana", and continues on about the diffusion of the legends recorded on the stones. The accuracy and usefulness of his otherwise insightful article has thus been negatively affected by the lamentable state of the field of Indian epigraphy. The same is true of his even more insightful article on the Buddha's supposed birth in Lumbini (Bareau 1987), q.v. below.]
but they have never been examined critically with respect to their dating, authenticity, or practically anything else. All has been accepted on belief right down to the present, and the false ideas embodied in them -- at least as they are currently understood -- have thus insinuated themselves into the publications of scholars whose work is otherwise very thoughtful.
This is essentially the state of the field today, close to a century after Hultzsch's edition of the inscriptions was published. The archaeologist Anton Fuhrer had already been publicly exposed as a forger and dealer in fake antiquities and expelled from his position in 1898,29
[Phelps (2010).]
so one might expect Hultzsch -- and the legion of others who have written on the inscriptions since Fuhrer's day -- to have at least mentioned the possibility that one or more of the inscriptions that Fuhrer "discovered" could be forgeries. But nothing of the kind has happened. Recent works on Indian epigraphy say not one word about this scandal, nor about its scholarly implications.30
[Major works on Mauryan period archaeology and Indian epigraphy usually mention Fuhrer but do not cite his works in their bibliographies, with the partial exception of Falk (2006: 25).]
Yet even a cursory inspection of the Lumbini and Nigali: Sagar Pillar Inscriptions -- both of which were discovered by Fuhrer, who was purportedly working on them when he was exposed -- shows that the Lumbini Inscription repeats exactly much of the phraseology of the Nigali: Sagar Pillar's text, but unlike the genuine "synoptic" Major Inscriptions, the phrases are not identical or closely parallel. That fact, plus the idea that an already divinized Buddha having been many times "reborn" could go back as far as the third century BC, or that anyone in the vicinity of Lumbini could have been given a Sanskrit epithet in the same period, centuries before Sanskrit is first attested in Indian inscriptions, ought to have at least aroused suspicion. Instead, scholars insist on the authenticity of all of the inscriptions, and also insist that they must all be ascribed to the ruler known from traditional -- very late, fantasy-filled, pious, hagiographical -- "histories", as well as from the Maski and Nittur Inscriptions, as "Asoka".31
[The name Devanampriya Asoka occurs only in the late Buddhist Inscriptions known as the Minor Rock Edicts, specifically the Maski Inscription and the recently discovered Nittur Inscription. According to Sircar (1975), the Gujarra Inscription should be included with them, but it is extremely problematic, and seems to be a crude forgery, as discussed below. The rubbing of the Maski Inscription provided by Hultzsch (1925: 174) is very poor. Hultzsch reads Asok[a]sa 'of Asoka' without comment or explanation of the bracketed "[a]", but in the rubbing the part that includes his Asok[a] is actually written very clearly [[x] [d]eva-na[m]piyasa Asokesa, with the name in an eastern dialect form.]
Although the Maski Inscription and the Nittur Inscription are the only ones that support the view that any inscriptions in Mauryan Brahmi script are by a ruler named "Asoka", the text is generally close to the other somewhat synoptic Buddhist Inscriptions, 32
[Hultzsch (1925: 228-229).]
so Hultzsch concludes on the entire authorship issue, "Every such doubt is now set to rest by the discovery of the Maski edict, in which the king calls himself Devanampriya Asoka".33
[Hultzsch (1925: xxxi).]
But this is exactly the opposite of the logical conclusion: the Maski and Nittur Inscriptions confirm that the texts of the Major Inscriptions (which explicitly and repeatedly say they are by Devanampriya Priyadarsi) on the one hand, and the Buddhist Inscriptions on the other, must have been promulgated by different rulers, and Devanampriya Asoka is of course responsible only for the Buddhist Inscriptions. It is time for Indologists to seriously consider the recent scholarship which suggests that some of the inscriptions are spurious.34
[See now Phelps (2010). Some have objected that the Lumbini pillar itself -- the stone and its preparation -- is unquestionably identical to the physical pillars used in the acknowledged Major Inscriptions. This is certainly the case. However, it is well known that there are a number of blank (uninscribed) pillars identical to pillars used in the Major Inscriptions, and the scholars who first saw the inscription on the Lumbini pillar remarked that it was remarkably clear, as if it had just been inscribed (Phelps 2010). Cf. the suspicious remarks of Schopen about the Lumbini Inscription (2004: 76-77). The inscription is also stunningly short. Even if the pillar was not recently inscribed by Fuhrer, the text itself reveals that it belongs not to the authentic Major Inscriptions of Devanampriya Priyadarsi, but to a much later period, no doubt exactly the period in which the legends about the Buddha's supposed birth in Lumbini were being created, as shown by Bareau (1987), who thus unknowingly -- but brilliantly -- demonstrates the lateness of the Lumbini Inscription. If he had even suspected that the Lumbini Inscription is spurious, his article would have made its case even more effectively than it does, and without the necessity of trying to explain what is patently an impossible historical background, as he actually shows very clearly. However, this topic requires much further specialized study.]
As Hultzsch himself notes, for Devanampriya 'Beloved of the gods', some versions of the synoptic Major Inscriptions have rajan 'the king'. It is thus accepted that Devanampriya is an epithet used as the equivalent of 'the King', or more appropriately, 'His Highness' or 'His Majesty'. As for Priyadarsi 'He who glances amiably', Hultzsch says that its Pali equivalents "occur repeatedly in the Dipavamsa35
[This is one of the most famous of the above-noted Buddhist hagiographical "histories". It is traditionally (and generously) dated to about the fourth century AD.]
as equivalents of Asoka, the name of the great Maurya king."36
[Hultzsch (1925: xxx).]
However, Hultzsch immediately points out, "A limine, another member of the Maurya dynasty might be meant as well; for, as stated above, the eighth rock-edict shows that the king's predecessors also bore the title Devanampriya, and the Mudrarakshasa applies the epithet Priyadarsana to Chandragupta".37
[Hultzsch (1925: xxx-xxxi).]
Moreover, as remarked above, Deeg notes that the inscriptions stood in the open for centuries after their erection, during which time anyone could have read them, so that the above very late literary works cited by Hultzsch, written as much as a millennium after the inscriptions were erected, were undoubtedly based on legends derived at least in part from the selfsame inscriptions. The only solution to this problem is to study the inscriptions without contaminating the data with material deriving from supposed Buddhist "historical" works such as those cited by Hultzsch.
If we set aside the "miscellaneous" inscriptions that have already been shown not to belong with the others,38
[These include the Barabar Hill cave inscriptions and several inscriptions in Mysore State (Hultzsch 1925: xxvi-xxvii, 175-181), which are (or perhaps should be) attributed to Asoka's grandson Dasaratha (Hultzsch 1925: xxviii, 181-182).]
as well as the Lumbini and Calcutta-Bairat Inscriptions, which are spurious as Mauryan inscriptions and were inscribed long after the Maurya Dynasty, apparently in the Saka-Kushan period (see below), there would seem to be two distinct sets of inscriptions in Mauryan Brahmi script.
The earlier set consists of the monumental synoptic rock and pillar inscriptions, referred to herein as the "Major Inscriptions", including the "Major Rock Edicts" (Girnar, Kalsi, Shahbazgarhi, Mansehra, Dhauli, Jaugada, Bombay-Sopara) and the "Major Pillar Edicts" (Delhi-Topra I-VI, Delhi-Mirath, Lauriya-Araraj and Lauriya-Nandargarh, Rampurva, Allahabad-Kosam). These all appear to be genuine Mauryan inscriptions, and all are explicitly ascribed in the texts themselves to the same ruler, Devanampriya Priyadarsi.
The other set, referred to henceforth as the "Buddhist Inscriptions", consists of all of the other inscriptions, which are later chronologically (in some cases explicitly), and are overtly Buddhist in content; most are also short and of very poor quality.
The period of the Major Inscriptions is determinable on the basis of explicit information in the texts themselves on Hellenistic historical personages, whose common period of rule is 272-261 BC.39
[Hultzsch (1925: xxxi-xxxvi) discusses this issue carefully and in some detail, but because of his belief that all of the inscriptions are by Asoka, he has ended up tainting the evidence by use of medieval Buddhist literary "histories". The dates given here are based on the most conservative treatment of the Hellenistic references in the inscriptions.]
The Buddhist Inscriptions do not contain any foreign chronological references, but they do contain sufficient references to developed Normative Buddhism that they must be dated to one or more much later periods. In any case, there is absolutely no principled way to justify lumping all of the Mauryan Brahmi script inscriptions together as the work of a single author.
If we were to believe Hultzsch and many other scholars, the Dipavamsa, a late Buddhist hagiographical "history", is a reliable historical work that can be trusted, so the author of the Major Inscriptions, who describes his remorse over his bloody war with the Kalingas, must be identified with Asoka. That would mean that the other set, the Later Inscriptions, which are sharply distinct in every respect, must be unidentified as to their author or authors, although unlike the Major Inscriptions they share the feature that they explicitly mention, and in most cases openly promote, Normative Buddhism. Moreover, one of the "Minor Rock Edicts" -- preserved in two apparently genuine inscriptional copies -- is clearly, explicitly said to be by Devanampriya Asoka 'His Majesty Asoka'. Accordingly, "Asoka" is the author of at least some of the later Buddhist Inscriptions, while other Buddhist inscriptions (most notably the Lumbini and Calcutta-Bairat Inscriptions) were evidently composed and erected even later. But in any case, the positive identification of Asoka as the author of the Maski and Nittur "Minor Rock Edict" inscriptions, which are radically different from any of the highly distinctive Major Inscriptions, makes it absolutely certain that "Devanampriya Asoka" cannot after all be the author of the Major Inscriptions, which explicitly and repeatedly say they are by Devanampriya Priyadarsi 'His Majesty Priyadarsi'. Considering the fact that we have absolutely no reliable historical information on "Asoka", and the fact noted by Deeg that the Major Inscriptions stood in open view for centuries after their erection and must have influenced the later writers of the Buddhist "histories" in question, it is most likely that "Asoka" was not in fact a Mauryan ruler. We do not really know when or where he ruled, if he existed at all; we do not actually know that Dasaratha was the grandson of a Mauryan ruler named Asoka; and so on.
In view of the above considerations, it is necessary to reorganize the inscriptions written in early Brahmi script into three groups:
1. The synoptic Major Inscriptions erected by the ruler called Devanampriya Priyadarsi. These include the Major Rock Edicts and the Major Pillar Edicts. (But they exclude the nonsynoptic, later, and clearly spurious "Seventh Pillar Edict", q.v. below in this appendix.) Their contents relevant to the reconstruction of Early Buddhism are discussed in Chapter Three.
2. The Synoptic Buddhist Inscriptions erected by the ruler known simply as Devanampriya, or in two instances (the Maski and Nittur Inscriptions), as Devanampriya Asoka, whose historical identity is unclear. His inscriptions pertain to Normative Buddhism, the mentioned elements of which are not attested to have come into existence until the Saka-Kushan period, over two centuries later. These inscriptions are discussed briefly in the following section.
3. A number of late, mostly spurious inscriptions that scholars have attributed to "Asoka". The most significant of these are the inscriptions explicitly attributed to "Asoka's" grandson Dasaratha; the "Seventh Pillar Edict"; the Lumbini Inscription; the Nigali Sagar Inscription; and the Calcutta-Bairat Inscription. These texts are not usable as sources on religion in India during the Mauryan period and are not further discussed here, with the exception of the "Seventh Pillar Edict", the Lumbini Inscription, and the Calcutta-Bairat Inscription, which have nevertheless been mistakenly used by many scholars as sources on Mauryan period Buddhism. They are discussed below.