Dharma

Chapter 2: King Asoka’s Dhaṃma

CHApTEr 2 King Aśoka’s Dham ˙ ma Aśoka’s inscriptions were written in an early Prakrit, which includes a variety of regional Sanskrit-related Indo-Aryan languages, including Pāli. In Prakrit our basic term is dhaṃma. The edicts are among the first records we have of Indian alphabetic writing. They were apparently no longer readable by the end of the classical period. Aśoka was not just a king but an emperor, and he used his edicts to broadcast an imperial program. In using the term dhaṃma, Aśoka is familiar with its having some specific connotations. For one thing, he is perfectly clear in some inscriptions that he associates it with Buddhism , in its sense of referring to the Buddha’s “teaching,” which had made him a convert. Aśoka was probably aware that dhaṃma carried older Brahmanical implications of royal authority, which we shall trace in chapter 3.We also get some hint of the range of meanings that Aśoka imputed to dhaṃma from a trilingual rock inscription where the Prakrit dhaṃma is given Greek and Aramaic counterparts. Here, dhaṃma is given the Greek translation eusebia, “piety, respect for gods, kings, and parents,” and the Aramaic translation qsyt, “truth.” These are the first known attempts to translate “dharma” into other languages, supplying terms that would resonate with speakers of these languages in the Kandahar area (in today’s Afghanistan) in the northwest of Aśoka’s empire. But they cannot necessarily be taken to supply the deepest colorings that dhaṃma would have had for Aśoka himself and that he intended for others who knew Prakrit. Clearly, Aśoka felt it was important to set what he had to say about dhaṃma in stone and to have officials who could help him proclaim and implement it. The inscriptions record that Aśoka himself went on rural “dhaṃmatours ” to bolster his message. Chronologically, Aśoka’s edicts were written between about 260 and 240 BCE and can be traced through that part of his reign (ca. King Aśoka’s Dhaṃma 13 268–231 BCE). In one famous edict, he records that in his eighth regnal year, he felt remorse over the massive deaths and hardships caused by his conquest of Kalinga (a recalcitrant territory in today’s eastern Indian state of Orissa), and now “considers conquest by dhaṃma the most important conquest.” Two other edicts tell us that he became a Buddhist lay disciple, and that after about a year and a half, circa 258 BCE, following a visit to the Buddhist saṅgha (monastic order), which made him more energetic in his efforts, he “set out for enlightenment , inaugurating a dhaṃma-tour.” The phrase “set out for enlightenment ” is surprising and much debated, since Aśoka is never more than a layman and a busy king, to boot, and also since the key term describes nothing less than the Buddha’s complete enlightenment. Since no other edict marks Aśoka’s progress in such terms, it is best just to acknowledge the Buddhist nature of the spiritual aspiration. This inaugural dhaṃma-tour consumed 256 nights and took Aśoka to such places as Bodh-Gaya, scene of the Buddha’s enlightenment, and Lumbini, the Buddha’s birthplace. Another rock edict contrasts these “dhaṃma-tours” with the “pleasure-tours” of “past kings,” who took outings for hunting and “other pastimes.” Then, beginning in his twelfth year, with an order that district officers go about teaching dhaṃma in five-year circuits, he started to develop a veritable dhaṃma bureaucracy. One year later he instituted the office of “dhaṃma-overseers,” commissioned to work not only among varied sects and the border peoples of the northwest (including the Greeks there at the time) but among soldiers , ascetics, householders, and the poor and aged. Being “assigned everywhere,” they served in the capital, “in all the provincial towns, and in the harems of [his] brothers and sisters and other relatives”! Among those charged with inculcating dhaṃma were “superintendents of women in the royal household, the inspectors of cattle and pasture lands, and other officials”; others’ duties extended to providing medical treatment for men and animals,in addition to rest houses, wells, and shade trees along the roads for them. Finally, his seven pillar edicts all come in a late burst in his twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh regnal years, circa 242...