No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
In an article entitled “Vyuthena 256”, published in the Journal Asiatique, 1911, part 1, pp. 119–26, M. Sylvain Lévi has reopened the subject of that record of Aśōka which we have, in various recensions, at Sahasrām, Rūpnāth, and Bairāt in Northern India, and at the Brahmagiri hill, Siddāpura, and the Jaṭṭiṅga-Rāmēśvara hill in Mysore. He has taken us another step towards the right understanding of the record, by showing that the words misā and amisā, which stand in one of the opening clauses, cannot mean mṛishā, ‘in vain, wrongly’, and amṛishā, ‘not in vain, not wrongly’, and do not represent the ablatives of misha, ‘false appearance, fraud, deceit’, and its converse amisha, but stand for missā and amissā, Pāli forms of the Sanskṛit nominatives plural miśrāḥ, ‘mixed’, and amiśrāḥ, ‘not mixed’. But we cannot agree with him in taking the word dēva in the same clause as denoting ‘kings’: in a record of Aśōka dēva can only mean ‘a god’. Nor can we agree with him in his interpretation of the general purport of the record.
page 1091 note 1 Compare Professor Hultzsoh's remarks, p. 1114 below.
page 1092 note 1 In accordance, of course, with its literal meaning, ‘a fifteen’, apart from its conventional use to denote a fortnight, a period of fourteen days and nights.
page 1093 note 1 It is in fact defined in the Nidānasūtra as a sidereal solar year, based on an understanding that the sun travels through each of the 27 nakshatras or divisions of the ecliptic in 13⅓ days: but we may fairly conjecture that this definition, which is of course not correct, is only an ex post facto explanation. For my reference to the Nidānasūtra I am indebted to an article by Mr. R. Shamasastry, which I have seen in manuscript, on the general subject of the Vedic calendar.
page 1094 note 1 In this case without any rectification by intercalation.
page 1094 note 2 Even apart from the special nature of the sāvana year, there is a great difference in calendrical value between (1) a year of 360 days adjusted annually by an addition of five or six days at the end of it, as was done by the Egyptians, and (2) a year of 360 days in which any rectification was deferred for at least five years, when the error had amounted to not less than an entire month.
page 1094 note 3 M. Lēvi tells me that the Kālākālasūtra is known only in a Chinese translation, and that the expression rendered by him by quinzaine is “10 + 5 days”.
page 1095 note 1 Ed. Shamasastry, p. 108:—Pañchadaś=āhōrātrāḥ pakshaḥ ا . . . . dvipakshō māsaḥ ا
page 1095 note 2 The words are:—Trimśad = ahōrātrāṇy = ēkō māsaḥ ا dvādaśa māsāḥ saṁvatsaraḥ.
page 1095 note 3 See the Divyāvadāna, ed. Cowell and Neil, p. 638 ff. The Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna was translated into Chinese in the first half of the third century, a.d.: see M. Lévi, loc. cit., p. 120; and Cowell and Neil, op. cit., pp. 655–9. We want very much to know exactly how much of the text of the astronomical, etc., part of the work, as we have it Sanskṛit, stands in the Chinese translation: and any Chinese scholar who would enlighten us on this point would confer a great favour on all who are interested in the Hindu chronography and astronomy.
page 1095 note 4 Op. cit, 644, lines 9–13. From the details that are given, the tatkshaṇa of the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna works out to 
of a second.
page 1095 note 5 Op. cit., p. 645, lines 3–6. The value of the nimēsha, ‘a twinkling’, varies according to different authorities: here it works out to 
of a second. Another table (op. cit., 644, lines 20–2) gives the divisions from the akshinimēsha, ‘the twinkling of an eye’, up to the muhūrta (48 minutes): here the akshinimēsha works out to 
of a second.
page 1096 note 1 In the earlier Hindū astronomy the solar year measured 366 civil days: in the later astronomy it measures 365·25 such days + x (a small fraction which varies according to the particular authority). In both cases it was divided astronomically into 12 equal parts (mean solar months, the use of which existed in India long before the introduction of the signs of the zodiac) each =
also (to match the division of the ecliptic into 360 degrees, which, again, was in use long before the introduction of the signs) into 360 equal parts (mean astronomical solar days) each = 
.
In the lunar reckoning the unit is the mean synodic lunar month: this was taken at 29·51612 … mean civil days in the earlier astronomy: in the later astronomy it measures 29·53058 such days + y (a very small fraction which varies according to the particular authority). In either case, the astronomical lunar year measures 12 of these units; and the unit is divided into 30 equal parts or mean lunar days, technically called tithis (the tithi is the time in which the moon in her monthly course increases her distance from the sun round the circle by twelve degrees).
page 1096 note 2 Blackstone's Commentaries, 23rd ed., vol. 2 (1854), p. 178Google Scholar.
page 1096 note 3 In the present calendar, which is regulated by true instead of mean or uniform time, the lunar year of twelve months consists of 354 or 355 days, and the year of thirteen months consists of 383, 384, or 385 days.
page 1097 note 1 See my article entitled “The Last Words of Aśōka” in this Journal, 1909. 981 ff., and my note bearing the same title in 1910. 1301 ff.
page 1097 note 2 In order to avoid the necessity for several notes, I may say here that anything previously advanced by me which is distinctly opposed to anything said here is to be treated as cancelled.
page 1098 note 1 See my remarks in this Journal, 1909. 989 ff.; and compare Professor Hultzsch, pp. 1115–16 below.
page 1098 note 2 We have six texts of the record: they represent two if not three recensions of it; and they have to be used to supplement and explain each other. Our chief guides are the texts at Sahasrām, Rūpnāth, and the Brahmagiri hill, and after them the Siddāpura text: the Bairāt text is much damaged; and the Jaṭṭiṅga-Rāmēśvara text is quite fragmentaiy. On the comparative merits of the published reproductions of the Brahmagiri text, which is in some respects the most important of them all, see my remarks in this Journal, 1908. 815, note 2, and 1909. 1012.
For the Rūpnāth text, reference may be made to this Journal, 1909. 1013: but the reading given by me there may be susceptible of improvement in a few minor details.
As regards the translation of the opening clauses, the words “for one year” are supplied by the Brahmagiri and Siddāpura texts. On that point and on the use of sumi, ‘I am’, see Professor Hultzsch in Journal, 1910. 145. For the passage about the gods, men. and Jambudīpa, see his note, p. 1114 below, and some remarks on it by Mr. Laddu.
page 1098 note 3 There is a question as to whether the Rūpnāth text describes him as a Sāvaka, Śrāvaka, a disciple, rather than as an Upāsaka: see this Journal, 1909. 1011. But the word is marked so clearly as upāsake in the Sahasrām, Bairāt, and Siddāpura texts, that I think that we must take it to have been used in the other texts also. The detail, however, is immaterial: the point is that Aśōka was not a monk.
page 1099 note 1 See this Journal, 1909. 1012.
page 1099 note 2 Takakusu, , Records of the Buddhist Religion, p. 73Google Scholar.
page 1099 note 3 See this Journal, 1908. 494; and Professor Hultzsch in 1909. 728.
page 1100 note 1 See the Nidānakathā, in the Jātaka, ed. Fausböll, vol. i, pp. 47, 49, line 3 ff.
page 1100 note 2 Sometimes they were sent as messengers, in fact as “angels”: for instance, a seulpture at the Bharaut Stūpa bears the label:—“Arhadgupta, a son of the gods, having descended, announces to the great assembly the (approaching) conception of the Blessed One:” see Ind. Ant., vol. 21, p. 233, No. 80. Again, the nymphs of the Trayastriṁśa heaven were sometimes sent to tempt ascetics: see, e.g., the story of Alambusā and Isisiṅga, Jātaka, No. 523. And, when Duṫṫhagāmanī of Ceylon lay dying, a god came from each of six heavens, with a chariot, seeking to induce the king to repair to his own abode: Mahāvaṁsa, ed. Geiger, 32. 63 f.; Tumour's translation, p. 198.
In connexion with the Trayastriṁśa gods, the following passage seems interesting: Mahāparinibbānasutta, this Journal, 1875, p. 70f.; translation, SBE, vol. 11, p. 31 f. When Buddha had arrived at Vaiśālī on his last journey, the Lichchhavis came out to greet him, riding in magnificent vehicles and arrayed in various clothes and ornaments. Seeing them, Buddha said to the monks who were with him:— “O brethren!, such of you as have never seen the Tāvatiṁsa gods. gaze upon this company of the Lichchhavis, behold this company of the Lichchhavis, compare this company of the Lichchhavis, even as a company of the Tāvatiṁsa gods!”
The Buddhist books frequently mention dēva-tnanussa-lōkō, “the world of gods and men”, and pajā sa-dēva-mannssā, “the population of gods and men”: see, e.g., Mahāparinibbānasutta, this Journal, 1876, p. 232; and Suttanipāta, pp. 14, 32, 48, 100, and verses 1047, 1003.
page 1100 note 3 This is a detail in the description of Sukhāvatī. the Land of Bliss, the abode of a former Buddha, Amitābha, which is sketched as an ideal Buddha-country in the larger Sukhāvatīvjūha; SBE, vol. 49, part 2, p. 42:—“And in that world there is no difference between gods and men, except when they are spoken of in ordinary and imperfect parlance as gods and men:” compare pp. 12, 02. This work belongs, of course, to the Mahāyāna school: but the idea may well have been an early one. The term used in the work for a “Buddha-country” is Buddha-kshētra. The text, Anecdota Oxouiepsia, 1883, p. 42, of the passage quoted above in translation, runs:— Na cha tatra lōkadhātau dēvānaṁ vā manushyāṇaṁ vā nānātvam = asty = anyatra saṁvṛiti-vyavahareṇa dēva-manushyāv = iti saṁkhyāṁ gachchhanti.
page 1101 note 1 The possibility is suggested by the occurrence of the word mriigha in this edict for the first time: but there is nothing really definite in it: see this Journal, 1908. 493, note. I think, however, that there are extraneous indications that Asoka did favour the Buddhists from a fairly -early time.
page 1102 note 1 For the text of this passage according to the Girnãr version, reference may be made to this Journal, 1908. 488; 1909. 1007. My suggestion, made on the latter occasion, that saṁto denotes Buddha as “the Tranquil One” and that in the words saṁto ayāya saṁbōdhiṁ we have a metrical quotation, is cancelled (see note 2 on p. 1097 above).
page 1102 note 2 It is not even the only Buddhist term: bōdhi and bōdha were used in just the same sense.
page 1102 note 3 I need hardly do more than point to the fact that Buddha and Saṁbuddha were appellations of the Jain Tīrthaṁkaras: see, e.g., the Kalpasūtra, ed. Jacobi, §§ 16, 123.
page 1102 note 4 See this Journal, 1908. 489.
page 1103 note 1 When I went out to India (in 1867), one of the first sights shown to me was that of a man, reported to me to have been a wealthy merchant, who had withdrawn from the world to spend his remaining days in the practice of religion. He was living in the upper part of a small edifice of laterite bricks and chunam, or some such materials, about seven feet high, on the foreshore at Bombay. The edifice consisted of a pedestal supporting a small square cell in which there was just room enough for him to sit crouched, with his knees drawn up to his chin. Three sides of this cell were built in: and he sat with his face away from the fourth side, over which there hung a screen which could be lifted up so as to see him and touch his back. And he remained there all through the daytime, engaged in meditation; coming out for a short time at night to eat whatever food might have been placed for him on the ground near his cell. How long he lived thus before the end came, I do not know.
I do not suggest that this style of life was adopted by Aśōka or by any people following his injunctions. But it is obvious that anyone applying himself to the vivāsa (explained farther on) which Aśōka recommended, could not work to support himself, but must depend on voluntary contributions; and that his vivsa, or his life, must come to an end with any failure of supplies. We must, I think, take āhāle, = āhāraḥ, in its most customary sense, ‘food’.
page 1104 note 1 This name, an appellation of Aśōka, is to be supplied in each text, from the opening clause of the pronouncement.
page 1104 note 2 The word sata for satā = śatāni may be regarded as more or less redundant: by literal translation the text would mean “256 hundreds”. But this usage is a frequent one in at any rate the later records: we have a pointed analogy in the Tōrkhēḍe record of a. d). 813, in saṁvatśaraśatāni 735, for saṁvatsarāḥ 735: see Epi. Ind., vol. 3, p. 54, text line 2.
Regarding the possibility that the final ta may be a mark of punctuation, see this Journal, 1909. 1004.
page 1105 note 1 Ind. Ant., 1908, p. 22. Subsequently, in his article “Les Vivāsāḥ d'Aśoka” in the Journal Asiatique, 1910, part 1, pp. 507–22Google Scholar, he showed us that we have the word lāti, ‘nights’, in the Sahasrām text: and on this occasion he corrected his rendering into “250 days passed by Aśoka away from his home” in the course of a religious tour.
page 1105 note 2 Suttanipāta, ed. Fausböll, p. 208, verse 1142.
page 1106 note 1 This Journal, 1904. 20.
page 1106 note 2 Ibid., 364.
page 1106 note 3 Dr, Fausboll's translation, SBE., vol. 10, part 2, p. 201Google Scholar, verse 19 (1141), runs:—“I see him in my mind and with my eye, vigilant, O Brāhmaṇa, night and day; worshipping I spend the night, therefore 1 think I do not stay away from him.” The word translated by ‘vigilant’ is appamādō: but it is customary to render appamāda by ‘diligence’. After chakkhunā the text has va, = iva; not cha.
page 1106 note 4 See note 1 on p. 1104 above.
page 1108 note 1 This Journal, 1910. 1310.
page 1108 note 2 For the exact positions of these places, see this Journal, 1909. 997 f.
page 1108 note 3 For the text of the preamble, see this Journal, 1909. 995. For the force of vachanēna, “in the name of”, see ibid. 996.
page 1108 note 4 See, fully, this Journal, 1909. 998.
page 1109 note 1 Ed. Oldenberg, 6. 1; 5. 101.
page 1109 note 2 Ed. Geiger, 5. 21; 20. 6. For the point that the Mahāvaṁsa was written as a commentary on the Dipavaṁsa see this Journal, 1909. 5, and note.
page 1109 note 3 This is the position whether we accept or reject my view (see this Journal, 1909. 22, 26) that Buddha died on Kārttika śukla 8 (instead of the full-moon day of Vaiśākha) and Aśōka was anointed to the sovereignty on Jyaishṭha śukla 5.
page 1109 note 4 We have to split up the “two and a half years and somewhat more” of our record into (1, at the beginning) one year, (2, at the end) 256 dayand-nights, = eight and a half months and five days, and (3, in the middle) the remainder, = ten months and a little more.
page 1110 note 1 See this Journal, 1908. 484 f.
page 1110 note 2 The custom of ancient Indian rulers to which I refer is thoroughly well established. For historical and literary instances already cited, see this Journal, 1909. 983 f.; 1910. 1307, note 1. As further literary instances, we may now conveniently quote the cases of Pandu and Dhṛitarāshtra: see pp. 684, 686, above.
page 1111 note 1 It was probably at some time towards the end of the eighth month that the coincidence which might occur was recognized.
page 1111 note 2 See this Journal, 1909. 1015 f.
page 1111 note 3 Dying speeches are not altogether unknown. For another highly interesting one, that of Duṭṭhagāmaṇī king of Ceylon (died about B.C. 85, roughly), see the Mahāvaṁsa, ed. Geiger, 32. 16–62; translation by Tumour, pp. 194–8.