DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

7.3J ASOKAN MONUMENTS 197
; only a few individuals could transcend it by sramanic renunciation.
The case is made much worse by poor translation or bad printing, for
the Greek euthes and exousias anomalous are much better
represented by the Latin translator’s stuttum and inaegualitatem
facultatum than the two italicized English phrases in the last
sentence of the quotation. The final sentence should therefore
end : “ it is stupid to institute laws which bind all equally but allow
unequal distribution of opportunity “. Just as the Greeks failed to
adopt Diodorus’s solution to the problem of slavery, the Indians
failed to adopt Hellenic reasoning about natural phenomena in
preference to the ‘crude’ attitude that the scientifically minded Greeks
perceived among the Indian philosophers. The reasons were the same
in each case : the class in possession had nothing to gain from the
change, while the status of commodity production was totally different
in the two societies.
7.3. The heir to the armies of Candragupta and Bindu-sara has
left us us own words carved in rock. Asoka’s rescripts would be
remarkable as a first step for the epigraphy of any country. The
few known pre-Asokan stupas and structures (characterized by very
large bricks) also seem negligible when compared’ with the considerable
edifices left by Asoka. The Mauryan palace at Patna (Kumrahar) was
admired by Chinese pilgrims at the beginning of the fifth century A.
D., but lost within the next two hundred years by fire. The huge
stone pillars supposedly went down through a hundred feet or more of
the soft wet soil upon which they had once been supported by wooden
foundation-beams. Recent archaeology has disproved this guesswork
(IAR. 1955, p. 19). The brilliant polish of Asokan granite columns,
described by the Chinese but laughed away as impossible by their
European readers, was confirmed after Cunningham’s first excavations
at Sarnath. The lion capital, (though the wheel of sovereignty it once
supported has crumbled under the action of time, the elements,
hostile visitors, and vandals) still remains one of the world’s great
works of art, well worthy to be the national symbol of India.
Nevertheless, the most impressive of Asokan monuments, both in the
monarch’s intentions and in their effect upon modern observers,
remain the words of his inscriptions. Their decipherment 5 was a