Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor (60 page)

8
Parts of an abacus and a decorated bell retaining the forepaws of a lion were found in Basti District, just south of the Nepal border in 1955, perhaps originating from a village known as Dharamsinghwa (Dharma-lion) or from the temple of Palta Devi, said to contain a large pillar worshipped as a Shiva lingam. Part of another Ashokan pillar may well be the object of worship in the Shaiva temple in the centre of Taulihawa town, on the Nepal side of the border. See Harry Falk,
A
okan Sites and Artefacts
, 2006.

9
R. Mukerji, S. K. Maitry, ‘A Fortunate Find of 1931’,
Corpus of Bengal Inscriptions
, 1967.

10
The various episodes of Waddell’s life have been charted by Charles Allen in
The Buddha and the Sahibs
, 2002;
Duel in the Snows: the True Story of the Younghusband Mission to Lhasa
, 2004; and
The Buddha and Dr Führer
, 2008.

11
Mukherji’s story is told in Charles Allen,
The Buddha and Dr Führer: an Archaeological Scandal
, 2008.

12
Dr L. A. Waddell,
Report on the Excavations at Pataliputra (Patna), the Palibothra of the Greeks
, 1903.

13 See Mary Stewart, ‘The Persepolitan Legacy in India’,
Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies
website, 1998.

14
Letter from G. Bühler to P. C. Peppé dated 21 February 1898, Peppé Collection, RAS.

15
Quoted in Charles Allen,
The Buddha and Dr Führer: an Archaeological Scandal
, 2008. The author has drawn on Dr Salomon’s expertise here.

Chapter 15. Ashoka in the Twentieth Century

1
Sir John Marshall, ‘The Story of the Archaeological Department in India’,
Revealing India’s Past
, 1939.

2
A. Foucher,
L’art gréco-bouddique du Gandhâra: Étude sur les origines de l’influence classique dans l’art bouddhique de l’Inde et de l’Extrême-Orient
, Vol. I

1905, Vol. II 1922, Vol. III 1951.

3
John Marshall in an unpublished letter to a friend dated Sanchi, 28 December 1918. Courtesy of John Wilson of John Wilson Manuscripts, Cheltenham.

4
A. Foucher,
La Porte Orientale du Stupa de Sanchi
, 1910.

5
Sir John Marshall,
A Guide to Sanchi
, 1918.

6
Radhakumud Mookerji,
Asoka
, 1927.

7
Harry Falk, ‘The Preamble at Panguraria’, P. Kieffer-Pulz and J. Hartmann, eds.,
Bauddhavidyasudhakarah
, 1997. This section owes much to Professor Falk’s remarks in
A
okan Sites and Artefacts
, 2006.

8
From the Sahasram MRE, as translated by Eugen Hultsch,
Inscriptions of A
oka
, 1925.

9
Ibid.

10
This argument has been put forward by Harry Falk in his
A
okan Sites and Artefacts
, 2006.

11
D. C. Sirkar, ‘Minor Rock and Pillar Edicts at Kandahar and Amaravati’,
Ashokan Studies
, 1979. In 1959 a sandstone washing-stone in a house in Amaravati town was seen to have some Brahmi characters inscribed on its side face. It bore traces of the characteristic Ashokan polish and appeared to have been cut down a section of pillar so as to make a rectangular slab. Because of the way it has been cut it carries only a few letters from each of
seven lines, with letters lost on either side. What appear to be words like
paratra
, ‘in the future world’, and
abhisita
, ‘anointed’, are characteristically Ashokan as found on the Girnar Rock Edict.

12
The case for and against Pabhosa as an Ashokan quarry is given in Harry Falk,
A
okan Sites and Artefacts
, 2006.

13
It may be that this started not in Taxila, as long assumed, but the island of Lanka. Excavations at Anuradhapura in the late 1980s and 1990s, under the direction of the British archaeologists Raymond Allchin and Robin Coningham, have produced potsherds bearing short inscriptions scratched in Brahmi lettering – not in itself surprising, except that radiocarbon dating has placed them in the fourth century
BCE
; that is to say, before Ashoka and perhaps even pre-dating his grandfather Chandragupta. See R. A. E. Coningham, R. Allchin, C. M. Batt and D. Lucy, ‘Passage to India? Anuradhapura and the Early Use of the Brahmi Script’,
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
, Vol. VI, 1996.

14
Gita Mehta, ‘In the Footsteps of the Buddha’,
Tricycle: the Buddhist Review
, Winter 1998.

15
Romila Thapar, ‘Propaganda as History Won’t Sell’,
Hindustan Times
, 9 December 2001.

16
P. K. Mishra, ‘Deorkother: a Milestone of History’,
Govt. of India Press Release
, 4 February 2003. See also Mishra, ‘Excavations at the Buddhist Site of Deorkjothar (Barhat) District Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, India 1999–2001’,
CIAA Newsletter
, Issue 13, June 2001.

17
B. N. Mukherjee, ‘A Fragmentary Inscription Referring to A
oka’, in
Journal of the Epigraphical Society of India
, forthcoming. Most regrettably, no clear photographs of the two sculptures or their inscriptions have been as yet published.

Chapter 16. The Rise and Fall of Ashokadharma

1
The
Mahavamsa
gloss states that Chanakya was a native of Taxila, where Chandragupta spent several years as his pupil. Although this commentary is comparatively late there seems no reason to doubt its veracity in this context.

2
Although traditionally dated to earlier centuries, the fact that Panini uses the word
yavanani
, or ‘Greek script’, in his
Ashtadhyayi
points to the fourth century
BCE
. His mention of King Ambhi, who ruled before and after Alexander, narrows him down to that same era. The unreliable
Manjusri-mula-tantra
specifically links Panini to Nanda: ‘The king Virasena will rule for 70 years and will be succeeded by the king Nanda. The latter’s reign will endure 56 years and his friend will be the Brahman Panini. Then there will appear the king Chandragupta …’

3
The word
gupta
is commonly understood to mean ‘preserved’ or ‘protected’,
but it is also the name of a clan belonging to the Vaisya caste, such as those who many centuries later established the Gupta dynasty. That matches the detail of Chandragupta being, as Justinus puts it, ‘born in humble life’.

4
Parisishtaparvan of Hemachandra
, trans. P. L. Bhargava.

5
W. W. Tarn,
The Greeks of Bactria and India
, 1938.

6
Within twenty years all but a handful were dead, and so played no decisive role in the final battle of the Wars of the Successors, fought in 281
BCE
, in which the elderly Seleukos faced his old friend and rival Lysimachus on the battlefield of Corupedium and saw him slain. The last survivors of these Mauryan war elephants were deployed in 279
BCE
by Alexander’s cousin Pyrrhus in his ‘pyrrhic’ victory against the Romans.

7
Strabo in
Ancient India as Described in Classical Literature
, trans. J. W. McCrindle, 1901.

8
These migrants were
Digambara
, or ‘sky-clad’ (i.e. naked), Jains, who at this time broke away from the less austere Swetambaras to form their own sub-sect.

9
Taranatha,
History of Buddhism in India
, trans. Lama Chimpa Alaka Chattopadhyaya, 1970.

10
Gosala, founder of the Ajivika sect, taught that man’s fate was pre-determined and since nothing could be done to alter the outcome, life should be suffered with indifference. However, what little is known about the Ajivikas comes mainly from Jain and Buddhist sources, and since the founders of both these religions were initially influenced by Gosala but went on to reject his doctrines, those sources must be regarded as suspect.

11
See the appendix in John S. Strong,
The Legend of King A
oka
, 1983.