Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor (57 page)

9
James Tod, ‘Major Tod’s Account of Greek, Parthian, and Hindu Medals, Found in India’,
Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society
, Vol. I, 1827.

10
James Tod,
Travels in Western India, Embracing a Visit to the Sacred Mounts of the Jains, and the Most Celebrated Shrines of Hindu Faith between Rajpootana and the Indus
, 1839.

11
James Tod, ‘Major Tod’s Account of Greek, Parthian, and Hindu Medals, Found in India’,
Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society
, Vol. I, 1827.

12
William Wilberforce in the debate that preceded the passing of the India Act of 1813. The same individual is on record as declaring that he held the conversion of India to Christianity to be the ‘greatest of all causes, for I really place it before Abolition [of slavery]’.

13
Robert Montgomery Martin,
The British Colonies: British Possessions in Asia
, Vol. XI, 1854.

14
Despatch, 29 September 1830.

15
James Alexander, ‘Notice of a Visit to the Cavern Temples of Adjunta in the East-Indies’,
Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society
, Vol. II, 1830.

16
The full background is set out in J. Prinsep, ‘Facsimiles of Ancient Inscriptions, lithographed by Jas. Prinsep’,
JASB
, Vol.V, 1836. It includes Mr Ralph’s account of his first visit to Ajanta with Mr Gresley.

Chapter 7. Prinsep’s Ghat

1
A perverse name change since Job Charnock, the founder of modern Calcutta, took the name from the village of Kalighat, the site of a riverine port since the days of the Mauryas and named as such by the Chinese monk Xuanzang in the seventh century.

2
Obituary ‘The Late James Princep
[sic]’, The Friend of India
, 30 July 1840.

3
From a letter quoted by Om Prakash Kejariwal in his introduction to James Prinsep’s
Benares Illustrated
, reprinted 1996.

4
James Prinsep, ‘Note on the Occurrence of the Bauddha Formula’,
JASB
, Vol. IV, 1835.

5
B. H. Hogdson in a letter dated 11 August 1827 to Dr Nathaniel Wallich, quoted in Donald S. Lopez, Jr, ‘The Ambivalent Exegete’, essay in
The Origins of Himalayan Studies: Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling 1820–1858
, ed. David Waterhouse, 2004.

6
B. H. Hodgson, ‘Sketch of Buddhism, derived from the Bauddha Scriptures of Nipal’,
Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society
, Vol. II, 1830.

7
B. H. Hodgson, ‘A Dispatch Respecting Caste by a Buddhist’,
Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society
, Vol. III, 1929.

8
B. H. Hodgson, ‘Notices on the Languages, Literature, and Religion of the Bauddhas of Nepal and Bhot’,
AR
, Vol. XVI, 1828.

9
H. H. Wilson, ‘Description of Select Coins from Originals or Drawings in the Possession of the Asiatic Society’,
AR
, Vol. XVII, 1832.

10
James Prinsep, ‘Editor’s Preface’,
JASB
, Vol. I, 1832. See also Charles Allen,
The Buddha and the Sahibs
, 2002.

11
Dr H. Falconer, quoted in H. T. Prinsep, ‘Memoir of the Author’,
Essays on Indian Antiquities by James Prinsep
, 1858.

12
Dr J. G. Gerard, ‘Memoir on the Topes and Antiquities of Afghanistan’,
JASB
, Vol. III, 1834.

13
C. A. Court, ‘Extracts Translated from a Memoir on a Map of Peshawar and the Country Comprised Between the Indus and the Hydaspes’,
JASB
, Vol. V, 1836.

14
James Prinsep, ‘Additions to Bactrian Numismatics, and Discovery of the Bactrian Alphabet’,
JASB
, Vol. VII, 1838.

15
James Prinsep, ‘Note on Lieutenant Burnes’ Collection of Ancient Coins’,
JASB
, Vol. II, 1833. See also Harry Falk, ‘The Art of Writing at the Time of the Pillar Edicts of Asoka’,
Berliner Indologische Studien
, 7, 1993; Richard Salomon, ‘On the Origin of the Early Indian Scripts’,
Journal of the American Oriental Society
, 115, 1995; Richard N. Frye, ‘The Aramaic Alphabet in the East’,
Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology
, 2006.

16
James Prinsep, ‘Note on the Coins, found by Captain Cautley, at Behat, near Saharanpur’,
JASB
, Vol. III, 1834.

17
James Prinsep, ‘On the connection of various ancient Hindu coins with the Grecian or Indo-Scythic series’,
JASB
, Vol. IV, 1835.

18
Alexander Cunningham, ‘Four Reports made during the years 1862–63–64–65’,
ASI Report
, Vol. I, 1871.

19
Ibid.

20
James Prinsep, ‘Note on Inscription No. 1 on the Allahabad Column’,
JASB
, Vol. III, 1834.

21
Lieutenant T. S. Burt, ‘A Description with Drawings of the Ancient Stone Pillar at Allahabad, Called Bhim Sen Gada or Club, with Accompanying Copies of Four Inscriptions Engraven Upon its Surface’,
JASB
, Vol. III, 1834.

22
B .H. Hodgson, ‘Notice of Some Ancient Inscriptions in the Characters of the Allahabad Column’,
JASB
, Vol. III, 1834.

23
James Prinsep, ‘Note on the Mathiah Lath Inscription’,
JASB
, Vol. III, 1834.

24
B. H. Hodgson, ‘Account of a Visit to the Ruins of Simroun, Once the Capital of the Mithila Province’,
JASB
, Vol. III, 1834.

25
James Prinsep, ‘Further Particulars of the Sarun and Tirhut Laths, and Accounts of Two Bauddha Inscriptions Found’,
JASB
, Vol. III, 1834.

26
James Prinsep, ‘Second Note on the Bhilsa Inscription’,
JASB
, Vol. III, 1834. This incorporated Captain E. Fell’s ‘Description of an Ancient and Remarkable Monument, near Bhilsa’, originally published in the
Calcutta Journal
, 11 July 1819.

27
George Turnour, ‘Examination of Some Points of Buddhist Chronology’,
JASB
, Vol. V 1836.

28
‘Minutes of the Committee of Pares on Mr Turnour’s Proposed Publication of the Mahavansi
[sic]’
, JASB, Vol. V 1836.

29
George Turnour,
An Epitome of the History of Ceylon, Compiled from Native Annals: and the First Twenty Chapters of the Mahawanso, translated by the Hon. George Turnour, Esq., Ceylon, Civil Service
, 1836.

30
For reasons of greater accuracy this excerpt is not from Turnour’s translation but from a later and more accurate version by Wilhelm Geiger,
The Mahavamsa: the Great Chronicle of Lanka
, translated into German and English and published in 1912. Elsewhere Turnour’s original translation is given, unless otherwise stated.

31
George Turnour,
An Epitome of the History of Ceylon, Compiled from Native Annals: and the First Twenty Chapters of the Mahawanso
, 1836. This section is missing from the MSS translated by Geiger, which paraphrases this section as follows: ‘When Bindusara had fallen sick Asoka left the government of Ujjeni conferred on him by his father, and came to Pupphapura [Pataliputra], and when he had made himself master of the city, after his father’s death, he caused his eldest brother to be put to death and took on himself the sovereignty in the splendid city.’

32
Wilhelm Geiger,
The Mahavamsa: the Great Chronicle of Lanka
, 1912.

33
Ibid.

34
Ibid.

35
George Turnour,
An Epitome of the History of Ceylon, Compiled from Native Annals: and the First Twenty Chapters of the Mahawanso, translated by the Hon. George Turnour, Esq., Ceylon, Civil Service
, 1836.

36
Wilhelm Geiger. The excerpt is from Ch. XXII. Turnour’s translation ended at Ch. XX.

Chapter 8. Thus Spake King Piyadasi

1
That same year saw the publication in France of
Foé Koué Ki
, subtitled
Relations des Royaumes Bouddhiques: voyage dans la Tarsarie, dans l’Afghanistan et dans l’Inde, exécuté, à la fin du IVe siècle, par Chy Fa Hian
. This was a posthumous work by the French sinologist, Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, completed by his colleagues Jules von Klaproth and Jean-Pierre Landresse. It was the first translation outside China of an account by a Chinese Buddhist monk named Faxian of his pilgrimage across India at the start of the fifth century CE.

2
According to the Society’s records, Stuart had in 1813 donated ‘two slabs with inscriptions from Bhubaneshwar in Orissa’.

3
The remaining statues purloined by Stuart were auctioned by Christie’s and are now in the British Museum.

4
Markham Kittoe’s report is contained in James Prinsep, ‘Examination of the Separate Edicts of the Aswastama Inscription at Dhauli in Cuttack’,
JASB
, Vol. VII, 1838.

5
The ‘passive resistance’ of the Oriya peoples of Orissa that irritated Markham Kittoe in the 1830s so unnerved the Armenian archaeologist Joseph Beglar in the 1870s that he devoted pages of an archaeological report to a denunciation of the Oriyas for their ‘stolid bigotry’ and ‘vengeful disposition’. See J. D. M. Beglar, ‘Report of Tours in the South-Eastern Provinces in 1874–75 and 1875–76’,
ASI Report
, Vol. XIII, 1882.

6
‘Son of Drona’, but in this context probably meaning ‘lower mountaintop’.

7
J. Prinsep, ‘Note on the Facsimiles of Inscriptions from Sanchi near Bhilsa, taken by Captain Ed. Smith, and on the Drawings of the Buddhist Monument, presented by Captain W. Murray’,
JASB
, Vol. VI, 1837.

8
J. Prinsep, ‘The Legends of the Saurashtra Group of Coins Deciphered’,
JRAS, VI
. 1837.

9
The word that Prinsep translated as ‘anointment’ was
abisitena
, corresponding to the Sanskrit term
abhisheka
used to describe the ancient Vedic rite of anointing rulers, corresponding to the Western term ‘coronation’, which in its strictest sense implies the crowning of a monarch. The earliest representations of rulers in India show them wearing ornate turbans but without any auspicious
tilak
mark on their foreheads, so there is no reason to object to the use of the word ‘coronation’ in this context, as used above and in several other modern renderings of the Ashokan edicts.

10
Romila Thapar,
A
oka and the Decline of the Mauryas
, 1973.

11
Ven. S. Dhammika,
The Edicts of King Asoka
, 2009. This translation, which draws on the earlier translations of Amulyachandra Sen, C. D. Sirkar and D. K. Bhandarkar, can be seen in full on
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/dhammika/wheel386.html
.

12
James Prinsep, ‘Interpretation of the Most Ancient of the Inscriptions on the Pillar called the Lat of Firuz Shah, near Delhi, and of the Allahabad, Radhia and Mattia Pillar or Lat Inscriptions which agree herewith’,
JASB
, Vol. VI, 1837.

13
George Turnour’s letter is quoted in James Prinsep, ‘Further Elucidation of the Lat or Silasthambha Inscriptions from Various Sources’,
JASB
, Vol. VI, 1837.

14
Turnour afterwards wrote again to say that he had since found other texts which confirmed that ‘Piyadaso, Piyadasino or Piyadasi … was the name of Dharmashoka before he usurped the Indian empire; and it is of this monarch that the amplest details are given in the Pali annals.’ See George Turnour, ‘Further Notes on the Inscriptions on the Columns at Delhi, Allahabad, Betiah, etc’,
JASB
, Vol. VI, 1837.

15
James Prinsep, ‘Facsimiles of Ancient Inscriptions’,
JASB
, Vol. VI, 1837.

16
James Prinsep, ‘Discovery of the Name of Antiochus the Great, in Two of the Edicts of Asoka King of India’,
JASB
, Vol. VII, 1838. Although published in the February issue, the discovery had been made late in 1837 following the despatch of Kittoe’s new facsimile of the Dhauli inscription.

17
Markham Kittoe, ‘Mr Kittoe’s Journal of his Tour in the Province of Orissa’,
JASB
, Vol. VII, 1838.

18
James Prinsep, ‘Discovery of the Name of Antiochus the Great, in Two of the Edicts of Asoka King of India’,
JASB
, Vol. VII, 1838. Although published in the February issue, the discovery had been made late in 1837 following the despatch of Kittoe’s new facsimile of the Dhauli inscription.

19
James Prinsep, ‘On the Edicts of Piyadasi, or Asoka, the Buddhist Monarch of India, Preserved on the Girnar Rock in the Gujerat Peninsula, and on the Dhauli Rock in Cuttack, with the Discovery of Ptolemy’s Name therein’,
JASB
, Vol. VII, 1838.

20
Ven. S. Dhammika,
The Edicts of King Asoka
, 2009.

21
Ibid.

22
Prinsep’s summary is quoted in Alexander Cunningham,
Inscriptions of Asoka
, 1877.