DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

208 THE LANGUAGE OF ASOKAN EDICTS [7.3
I, II) This edict must be (read out to and) listened to (by full gatherings) on every day of the
constellation of Tisya (three times a year) and it may be listened to even by individuals on
frequent other occasions... For the following purpose has this rescript been written here : in
order that the judicial officers of the city may strive at all times (for this, that) neither
undeserved fettering nor harsh treatment are happening to (men).”
That is, not only the people in general but the all-powerful rajjuka
officials were to follow the new way. Every citizen was to be made
conscious of new rights and new state methods. Fettering, whether
deserved or undeserved, was not simple imprisonment but penal slavery.
Undeserved fettering would mean keeping a man at work (as a penal
slave) after he had served out the amercement, as well as sentence on the
innocent. Every five years, high ministers were to
inspect the provinces to see that these instructions as to justice were
being carried out. The Dhauli edicts covered a territory recently
conquered, but the same instructions were sent out to the viceroys at
Ujjain and Taxila. The simple words therefore amounted to a.new
‘Bill of Rights’. This accounts for style and language. However, the
philologists’ argument that each edict was written in the local dialect
is not clear to me. It is difficult to believe that the aboriginal population
of Maski (south of Raichur) and Brahmagiri (Mysore) spoke a
variety of Magadhi or that a frontier Greek who might have read the
letter of Alexander in an early copy could follow the Asokan language
as well. Surely, the instructions are meant in the first instance for the
local bureaucracy, which, like most of the traders, had to know the language
of Magadha — in the north, not too different from the peoples’ languages.
The variations between edicts are precisely those one would expect in
a language not yet standardized by extensive literary use. One finds more
variation in rustic Hindi, or Konkani to this day; for the latter, in a
range of 60 miles. Standardization came after the Pali canon, which
is nearest to the Ujjain variant of Asokan Magadhi, though the Buddha
would not have spoken it himself any more than an Alpine Italian
would adopt the Sicilian dialect for his sermons. The tremendous
importance of the edicts to the officers and citizens of the empire follows