THE MAURYAN Emperor Ashoka evolved his own code of conduct, which he called ‘dhamma’ for the masses, said former Lucknow University Faculty of Arts dean Prof KK Thapalyal.
Ashoka, who adopted Buddhism and did a commendable job for its propagation in India and abroad, was silent on the Eight-Fold Path, the Middle Path and Nirvana (Salvation), the basic elements of Buddhist philosophy, in his inscriptions, he said.
Prof Thapalyal was speaking on the second day of a special course on Mauryan Inscriptions at Jnana-Pravaha Centre for Cultural Studies and Research, in Samne Ghat.
Being a far-sighted ruler, Ashoka was aware that if good habits were to be inculcated in his subjects, he would have to interact with them at their mental level, he said. Ashoka knew that high philosophical thoughts and teaching would not be effective, he said.
“So, his philosophy of dhamma aimed at encouraging people to develop good habits. This term appears repeatedly in his inscriptions everywhere. The stress is on performing noble deeds. Later on, politeness was added,” said Praf Thapalyal, a noted scholar of the Brahmi and the Kharoshti scripts.
“Ashoka instructed people to follow the path of Dhamma by doing maximum work for noble causes,” he said. In a majority of inscriptions, the emperor did not mention his name as Ashoka, but as ‘Devanampriya’. He said that only two of Ashoka’s inscriptions found from Mansehra (Hazra district in Pakistan) and Shahbazgarhi (Peshawar district in Pakistan) are written in Kharoshti.