ANCIENT ROCK-HEWN EDICTS.
Having had the good fortune, some years ago, to find myself in the grand old Indian land, in company of friends so exceptional as still to take keen interest in all matters relating to native customs and Indian antiquities, I hailed with delight their proposal that we should devote some weeks to leisurely wandering among the chief points of interest along the line of railway, and thus with ease and comfort see more of the country than many old Indians have explored in their long years of exile. One of the chief cities where we made a prolonged halt was Allahabad—that is, ‘the City of God’—now the point of junction for the railway from Bombay and from Calcutta, but dear to the natives of India as the meeting-place of the sacred rivers the Jumna and the Ganges, and consequently a very favourite place of pilgrimage, where countless multitudes annually assemble from every part of Hindustan.
Immediately above the junction of the sacred rivers stands the old fort of Allahabad, a grand mass of red sandstone, built by the great Emperor Akbar. It now contains a very large English armoury—great guns and little guns, and cannon and mortars, and all manner of weapons. Here it was that the English found refuge during the Mutiny; and our friends showed us the balcony, over-hanging the river, to which they thankfully hauled up any morsels of food or firewood brought to them by the faithful old servants, whom, however, they had been compelled to dismiss, with the rest of the native attendants, from within the walls of the fort. The mutiny in this city was very quickly crushed by the timely arrival of General Neill with his ‘Madras Lambs;’ not, however, till after one awful night, when, the doors of the jails having been broken open, three thousand miscreants were turned loose to lend their aid in burning and plundering the city. Upwards of fifty Europeans were massacred that night, including eight young cadets who had only just arrived from home. In the centre of the fort stands a very remarkable monolith, surmounted by a lion. It bears an inscription in the ancient Pali character, and is known as the Lat or Stone of Asoka, a mighty emperor who lived about 250 B.C., and who, having embraced the tenets of Buddha, inscribed his decrees on sundry great pillars which he erected in divers cities. One of these is at the Buddhist caves of Karli, and is called the Lion-pillar. It is a sixteen-sided monolith, surmounted by four lions. Another exists at Delhi, in the ruined fort of Togluck, though it is called after Feroze, a very modern emperor, whereas Asoka was, as we have seen, a mighty prince of pre-Christian ages. His pillars are sometimes surmounted by lions, sometimes by human figures, overshadowed by the seven-headed cobra, or some other emblem of power, such as the mystic umbrella—symbolical of Buddha—of which sufficient trace remains to be recognised, though time and weather have in the course of two thousand long years worn away the distinct form. Very similar pillars are at the present day erected in Nepaul, whereon are placed statues of kings, sometimes shaded by an umbrella made of metal—and in one instance, by the serpent hood.
From the reign of Asoka, the stone architecture of India dates its origin. He is said to have left eighty-four thousand buildings of various sorts, as the marks of his footprints on Time’s sands. To him is attributed the great tope at Sanchi, that mighty relic-shrine, whose huge stone portals are to this day a marvel of mythological sculpture, the details of which have now been made so familiar to us all by casts, photographs, and description (see Fergusson’s Tree and Serpent Worship, and also the great plaster casts at the South Kensington Museum)—sculptures representing the primeval worship of sacred serpents and holy trees, and displaying wheels, umbrellas, and other symbols more particularly suggestive of the new faith—that of Buddha—which Asoka established as the religion of the state. This mighty despot having determined that the new maxims which had become binding on his own conscience should henceforth be law to his subjects, proceeded to inscribe them on stone in every corner of his dominions, that the wayfarer might read them for himself.
Thus it is that, besides finding his edicts engraven on his buildings and pillars, they are also found inscribed—as on imperishable tablets—on great rocks scattered over the country from Orissa to Peshawur. One of these huge boulders, twenty feet in height and twenty-three in circumference, lies in the lonely jungle in the district of Kathiawad in Western India. Here the emperor states, that being convinced of the iniquity of slaying living creatures, he will henceforth desist from the pleasures of the chase. Henceforth, no animal must be put to death either for meat or sacrifice; and this law, which the emperor appoints for himself, is to apply to all his subjects, who are in future to feed only on vegetables. His protection of the brute creation applies, not only to their lives; medical care is to be provided for all living creatures, man and beast, throughout the whole empire, as far south as Ceylon. Wells were to be dug, and trees planted, that men and beasts might have shade and drink. The emperor forbids all convivial meetings, as displeasing to the gods or injurious to the reveller. He declares that he will himself set the example of abstaining from all save religious festivals. On this huge ‘Junagadh Rock,’ as it is called, allusion is also made to four contemporary Greek kings. The date thus obtained is proved to be about 250 B.C., which just corresponds with that of Asoka himself.
The edicts go into various other matters. They inculcate the practice of a moral law of exceeding purity; they enjoin universal charity; and bid all men strive to propagate the true creed. To this end, special missionaries were to be sent forth to the uttermost parts of the earth, to preach to rich and poor, learned and ignorant, that they might bring those ‘which were bound in the fetters of sin to a righteousness passing knowledge.’ Nevertheless, a liberal margin was to be allowed for diversity of opinion, and nothing savouring of religious persecution was to be tolerated. At the same time, the domestic life of the people was subject to the strictest censorship, overseers being appointed to report on every act in the life of every subject. These domestic inspectors attracted the particular attention of the Greeks who visited India in the train of Alexander the Great, who first turned the attention of Europeans to the then unknown Indian land, and pursued his career of conquest as far as the banks of the Sutlej, making himself master of the Punjab, and establishing Greek colonies at various places. These Greeks described the domestic monitors as ‘Episcopi,’ and asserted that their duty was to report, either to the king or the magistrates, everything that happened in town and country—an office which they seem to have filled wisely and with discretion. We may here observe that there must be some confusion in this chronicle of ancient days, inasmuch as Alexander the Great is stated to have died at Babylon in the year 323 B.C., a hundred years before the date usually assigned to the death of Asoka.
But Asoka’s pillar has been to us as a talisman, transporting us backward for twenty centuries, to those remote days, which we now hear of as a dream of the past, when Buddhism first arose, and, like a mighty wave, for a while overspread the whole land. Hinduism is now, however, the chief religion of this north-west province.
The pillar is not the sole representative of diversity of creed that exists within the huge Mohammedan fort, a fort now held by Christians, who have fitted up one of Akbar’s buildings as a military chapel, where, we believe, service is held daily. Half-way between this Christian church and the Buddhist pillar there still exists a Hindu temple of exceeding sanctity, though how the Mohammedans came to tolerate its existence within their fort is a marvel quite beyond comprehension. It is a foul temple of darkness, extending far underground, and roofed with low arches. We descended by a flight of dark dirty steps, dimly revealed by a couple of tallow candles; and we followed the old soldier who acted as our guide, and who led us along dark passages, and did the honours of various disgusting idols, stuck in niches, some as large as life, others quite small, but all alike hideous, and all adorned with flowers, and wet with the libations of holy Ganges water, poured upon them by the faithful. The flowers are the invariable large African marigold and China roses.
Each image is generally smeared with scarlet paint, to symbolise the atonement of blood that should be offered daily, but which most of the worshippers are too poor to afford. This substitute for the sacrifice of blood is common all over India, where a daub of red paint administered to the village god is at all times an acceptable act of atonement. These village gods, however, are generally placed beneath some fine old tree, with the blue sky overhead; but this disgusting temple was one which you could not enter without a shuddering impression of earthly and sensual demon-worship.
Here we were also shown a budding tree, supposed to be of extraordinary antiquity; a fiction by no means shaken, though the Brahmins frequently substitute a new tree. So holy is this temple, that when, at one time, all natives were excluded from the fort, one rich Hindu pilgrim arrived, and offered twenty thousand rupees for permission to worship here. The commandant, however, had no authority to admit any one, so was compelled to refuse his prayer, in spite of so tempting a bait. It was with a feeling of thankful relief that we emerged from that noxious and oppressive darkness into the balmy air and blessed sunlight.
We spent some pleasant hours in one of the balconies overhanging the river, while in the cool room within, fair women with musical voices accompanied themselves on the piano, in Akbar’s old quarters; and so we idled away the heat of the day till the red sun sank into the water, behind the great dark railway bridge, a bridge which the Brahmins declared the gods would never tolerate on so sacred a river as the Jumna, but which nevertheless spans the stream in perfect security. It was a vast undertaking, as, owing to the great extent of country subject to inundation during the rains, it was necessary to construct a bridge well-nigh two miles in length. The Indian railway has certainly necessitated an amazing amount of work, on a scale so vast as to test engineering skill to the uttermost, and in no respect more strikingly than in the construction of these monster bridges, one of which, across the Soane, is about a mile and a quarter in length, while that on the Sutlej, between Jellunder and Loodiana, is about two and a half miles. On the sandbanks just below the fort, huge mud-turtles lay basking, and the gentlemen amused themselves by taking long shots at them from the balconies, whereupon the creatures rose and waddled into the water with a sudden flop. These sandbanks are favourite haunts of crocodiles—muggers, as they are called—which, however, declined to show on this occasion.
Perhaps the pleasantest of our afternoons at Allahabad was one spent in watching the evolutions of the native cavalry, Probyn’s Horse, a beautiful regiment, whose graceful dress, and still more graceful riding, were always attractive. On this occasion they were playing the game of Naza Bazi, or the Game of the Spear, when, riding past us singly at full gallop, they with their long spear split a wooden tent-peg driven hard into the ground. Then they picked a series of rings off different poles; afterwards, with unerring sword, cleaving a succession of oranges, stuck on posts, as though they were foemen’s skulls. Next followed some very pretty tilting with spear against sword. We had only one fault to find—their strokes were so unerring that they never allowed us the excitement of a doubt! Altogether, it was the prettiest riding imaginable, and a beautiful game, though the practice of suddenly pulling up short, when at full speed, on reaching the last peg, thereby showing off splendid horsemanship, must often injure the good steed. As we watched this beautiful sport, we all agreed in wishing we could see it introduced into England. That wish has since then been fulfilled, and I learn with pleasure that many of our own cavalry have attained such perfection in this game of skill as to be no whit behind the most accomplished of Indian horsemen.