King Asoka and Buddhism - Urban Dharma

is the nearest that we get in the inscriptions to a direct referenceto his embellishing a stūpa and thus making a donationat the site. These inscriptions are specific to the concerns of thesangha and to places of Buddhist pilgrimage. They are to thatextent affirmations of his adherence to Buddhism.We now come to the Minor Rock Inscription, which raisesa number of interesting questions. These are some seventeenversions either exact or approximate of this edict and doubtlessmore will be discovered. Unlike the Major Rock Edicts thereis a greater variation in these texts: some are shorter, some areaddressed to local officers, some occur only in certain placesand even the language varies. The question of why certainsections were omitted remains unanswered and suggests thatsome sections were considered more important than othersand were perhaps issued separately although within a brieftime span.The earlier part of the inscription occurs at all the sites. Thelatter half occurs only at seven sites and that too in a clusterin three districts of Kurnool, Bellary and Chitradurga in Karnataka.The third segment occurs only in the sites in Chitradurga.Strangely, these do not even occur across Tungabhadrain the sites of the Raichur district. It is possible that these segmentswere issued by Aśoka when he was actually touring inthis area and were issued as after-thoughts.The first segment is in some cases addressed to the officersof the area and the inscription therefore becomes one which isintended for the general public. This becomes amply clear inthe statement that the officers are to make public its contents.He describes himself as a Buddhist upāsaka. It contains thecontroversial statement, …yā imāya kālāya jaṃbudipassi amissādevā husu to dāni missā kaṭā…. This has been interpreted either21