These apparently trivial fragments of rude writing [wrote Prinsep] have led to even more important results than the other inscriptions. They have instructed us in the alphabet and language of these ancient pillars and rock inscriptions which have been the wonder of the learned since the days of Sir William Jones, and I am already nearly prepared to render the Society an account of the writing on the lat [pillar] at Delhi, with no little satisfaction that, as I was the first to analyse these unknown symbols … so I should now be rewarded with the completion of a discovery I then despaired of accomplishing for want of a competent knowledge of the Sanskrit language.
Typically, Prinsep then launched into a long discussion of the sculpture and other inscriptions, keeping his audience and readers on tenterhooks for another ten pages. But to Lieutenant Alexander Cunningham, his protégé in Benares, he had already announced the discovery in a letter.
23 May 1837.
My dear Cunningham, Hors de département de mes études! [a reference to a Mohammedan coin that Cunningham had sent him]. No, but I can read the Delhi No. 1 which is of more importance; the Sanchi inscriptions have enlightened me. Each line is engraved on a separate pillar or railing. Then, thought I, they must be the gifts of private individuals where names will be recorded. All end in danam [in the original characters] – that must mean ‘gift’ or ‘given’. Let’s see …
He proved his point by immediately translating four such lines, and then turned to the first line of the famous pillar inscriptions: Devam piya piyadasi raja hevam aha, ‘the most-particularly-loved-of-the-gods raja declareth thus’. He was not quite right; the r should have been 1, laja not raja. But he was near enough. Danam giving him the d, the n and the m, all very common and hitherto unidentified, had been just enough to tip the balance.
With the help of a distinguished pandit he immediately set about the long pillar inscriptions. It was June, the most unbearable month of the Calcutta year; to concentrate the mind even for a minute is a major achievement. By now the Governor-General and the rest of Calcutta society were in the habit of taking themselves off to the cool heights of Simla at such a time. Prinsep stayed at his desk. The deciphering was going well but he had at last acknowledged the unexpected difficulty of the language not being Sanskrit. As Hodgson had suggested, it was closer to Pali, the sacred language of Tibet, or in other words it was one of the Prakrit languages, vernacular derivations of the classical Sanskrit. This made it difficult to pin down the precise meaning of many phrases. Prinsep also had, himself, to engrave all the plates for the script that would illustrate his account.
Nevertheless, in the incredibly short space of six weeks, his translation was ready and he announced it to the Society. As usual he treated them to a long preamble on the discoveries that had led up to it and on the difficulties it still presented. But, unlike other inscriptions, these had one remarkable feature in their favour. There was an almost un-Indian frankness about the language, no exaggeration, no hyperbole, no long lists of royal qualities. Instead there was a bold and disarming directness:
Thus spake King Devanampiya Piyadasi. In the twenty-seventh year of my anointment I have caused this religious edict to be published in writing. I acknowledge and confess the faults that have been cherished in my heart …
The king had obviously undergone a religious conversion and, from the nature of the sentiments expressed, it was clearly Buddhism that he had adopted. The purpose of his edicts was to promote this new religion, to encourage right thinking and right behaviour, to discourage killing, to protect animals and birds, and to ordain certain days as holy days and certain men as religious administrators. The inscriptions ended in the same style as they had begun.
In the twenty-seventh year of my reign I have caused this edict to be written; so sayeth Devanampiya; ‘Let stone pillars be prepared and let this edict of religion be engraven thereon, that it may endure into the remotest ages.’
Something about both the language and the contents was immediately familiar: it was Old Testament. Even Prinsep could not resist the obvious analogy – ‘we might easily cite a more ancient and venerable example of thus fixing the law on tablets of stone’. Perhaps it was just out of reverence that he called them edicts rather than commandments. But the message was clear enough. Here was an Indian king uncannily imitating Moses, indeed going one better; as well as using tablets of stone, he had created these magnificent pillars to bear his message through the ages.
But who was this king? ‘Devanampiya Piyadasi’ could be a proper name but it was not one that appeared in any of the Sanskrit king lists. Equally it could be a royal epithet, ‘Beloved of the Gods and of gracious mien’. At first Prinsep thought the former. In Ceylon a Mr George Tumour had been working on the Buddhist histories preserved there and had just sent in a translation that mentioned a king Piyadasi who was the first Ceylon king to adopt Buddhism. This fitted well; but what was a king of Ceylon doing scattering inscriptions all over northern India? One of the edicts actually claimed that the king had planted trees along the highways, dug wells, erected travellers’ rest houses etc. How could a Sinhalese king be planting trees along the Ganges?
A few weeks later Tumour himself came up with the answer. Studying another Buddhist work he discovered that Piyadasi was also the normal epithet of a great Indian sovereign, a contemporary of the Ceylon Piyadasi, and that this king was otherwise known as Ashoka. It was further stated that Ashoka was the grandson of Chandragupta and that he was consecrated 218 years after the Buddha’s enlightenment.
Suddenly it all began to make sense. Ashoka was already known from the Sanskrit king lists as a descendant of Chandragupta Maurya (Sandracottus) and, from Himalayan Buddhist sources, as a legendary patron of early Buddhism. Now his historicity was dramatically established. Thanks to the inscriptions, from being just a doubtful name, more was suddenly known about Ashoka than about any other Indian sovereign before AD 1100. As heir to Chandragupta it was not surprising that his pillars and inscriptions were so widely scattered. The Mauryan empire was clearly one of the greatest ever known in India, and here was its noblest scion speaking of his life and work through the mists of 2000 years. It was one of the most exciting moments in the whole story of archaeological discovery.
CHAPTER FOUR Black and Time-Stained Rocks
Having broken the Ashoka Brahmi code, Prinsep was now in full cry. If mind and body could stand it, he would round onto the cave temple inscriptions, try the coins again, and finally double back to the long rock inscriptions. Only then would it be possible to assess the full importance of his discovery and to set Ashoka in perspective. But even as he worked, more monolithic finds were accumulating.
Thanks largely to Hodgson’s discoveries along the Nepalese frontier, Prinsep knew of five Ashoka columns. As he deciphered their messages a sixth came to light in Delhi (the second to be found there). Broken into three pieces and buried in the ground, it was thought to have been the casualty of an explosion in a nearby gunpowder factory sometime in the seventeenth century. The inscription was badly worn, though evidently the same as that on the other pillars. In due course the whole pillar was offered to the Asiatic Society for their new museum. They accepted it but found the difficulties and cost of transporting it to Calcutta to be prohibitive; eventually they settled for just the bit with the inscription on it.
The question of how these pillars had originally been moved round India, and whether they were still in their ordained positions, was an intriguing subject in itself. It was now appreciated that they were all of the same stone, all polished by the same unexplained process, and therefore all from the same quarry. Prinsep thought this was somewhere in the Outer Himalayas, although we now know their source to have been Chunar on the Ganges near Benares. Either way, they had somehow been moved as much as 500 miles, no mean feat considering that the heaviest weighed over forty tons.
Presumably river transport was the answer. An interesting sidelight on this had just been shed by the study of the Mohammedan histories of India. These revealed that neither of the Delhi pillars had originally been erected in Delhi; they had evidently been moved there to adorn the capital of the early Mohammedan kings