tion and the excellence of his
motives, this obvious side of his character is excusable. His
inscriptions give us a unique series of sermons on stones and a record,
if not of what the people of India thought, at least of what an
exceptionally devout and powerful Hindu thought they ought to think.

Between thirty and forty of these inscriptions have been discovered,
scattered over nearly the whole of India, and composed in vernacular
dialects allied to Pali[581]. Many of them are dated by the year of the
King's reign and all announce themselves as the enactments of Piyadassi,
the name Asoka being rarely used[582]. They comprise, besides some
fourteen single edicts[583], two series, namely:

(1) Fourteen Rock Edicts, dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth
years of Asoka's reign[584] and found inscribed in seven places but the
recensions differ and some do not include all fourteen edicts.

(2) Seven Pillar Edicts dating from the 27th and 28th years, and found
in six recensions.

The fourteen Rock Edicts are mostly sermons. Their style often recalls
the Pitakas verbally, particularly in the application of secular words
to religious matters. Thus we hear that righteousness is the best of
lucky ceremonies and that whereas former kings went on tours of pleasure
and hunting, Asoka prefers tours of piety and has set out on the road
leading to true knowledge. In this series he does not mention the Buddha
and in the twelfth edict he declares that he reverences all sects. But
what he wished to preach and enforce was the _Dhamma_. It is difficult
to find an English equivalent for this word[585] but there is no doubt
of the meaning. It is the law, in the sense of the righteous life which
a Buddhist layman ought to live, and perhaps religion is the simplest
translation, provided that word is understood to include conduct and its
consequences in another world but not theism. Asoka burns with zeal to
propagate this Dhamma and his language recalls[586] the utterances of
the Dhammapada. He formulates the law under four heads[587]: "Parents
must be obeyed: respect for living creatures must be enforced: truth
must be spoken ... the teacher must be reverenced by the pupil and
proper courtesy must be shown to relations." In many ways the Sacred
Edict of the Chinese Emperor K'ang Hsi resembles these proclamations for
it consists of imperial maxims on public morality addressed by a
Confucian Emperor to a population partly Buddhist and Tao