Major Rock Edict of Asoka (6)

ေဒ၀ါနံ ပိေယာ ပိယဒသီ ရာဇာ ဧ၀ံ အာဟ, အတိကံတံ အံတရံ နဘူတပုု၀ံ သ၀ံ ကာလံ အထကံမံ ၀ါ ပဋိေ၀ဒနာ ၀ါ၊ ေသ မယာ ဧ၀ံ ကတံ, သ၀ံ ကာလံ အဒမာနသ ေမ အံေတ ၾသေရာဓနမွိ, ဂဘာဂါရမွိ, ၀ဇသိ စ ၀ိနီတမွိ စ ဥယာနမွိ စ သ၀ၾတ ပဋိေ၀ဒကာ ဌိတာ အဌံ ေမ ဇနသ အဌံ ပဋိေ၀ဒယံတု ေမ’တိ၊ သ ဗၾတ စ ဇနသ အ႒ံ ကေရာမိ အဟံ၊ ယံ ပိ စ ကႎ စိ မုခေတာ အာဏာပယာမိ သြယံ ဒါပကံ ဝါ သာဝါပကံ ဝါ, တံ ဝါ ပုန မဟာမာေတဟိ အတိယာယိေက အာေရာပိတံ ေဟာတိ, တာယ အထာယ ဝိဝါေဒါ ဝါ နိစ်ာတိ ဝါ သံေတာ ပရိသာယံ အနံတရိေယန ပဋိေ၀တဗ်ံ ေမ’တိ သဝၾတ သဝံ ကာလံ ဧဝံ ေမ အာဏာပိတံ၊ နထိ ဟိ ေမ တာေသာ ဥဌာနမွိ အထသံတီရဏာယ ကတဗ်ံ၊ မတံ ဟိ ေမ သဝေလာကဟိတံ၊ တသ စ ပုန ဧတံ မူလံ ဥဌာနံ စ အထသံတီရဏာ စ၊ နထိ ဟိ ကံမံတရံ သဝေလာကဟိတမွာ၊ ယံ စ ကႎ စိ ပရာကမာမိ အဟံ, ကႎ တိ ဘူတာနံ အနံဏံ ဂေဆယံတိ, ဣဓ ကႎ စိ သုခယာမိ, ပရၾတ စ သြဂံ အာရာဓယတု’တိ၊ ေသ ဧတာယ အထာယ အယံ ဓံမလိပိ ေလခါပိတာ ကႎ တိ စိရဌိတိကံ ေဟာတု ဣတိ, တထာ စ ေမ ပုၾတာ စ ေပါၾတာ စ ပပုၾတာ စ ေမ ပရာကမံတု သဝေလာကဟိတာယ၊ ဒုကရံ စ ေခါ ဣမံ အဉ  ၾတ အေဂန ပရာကေမန။ ---ေသာေတာ၊ (အေသာကမင္းတရားႀကီး၏ အေသာကေက်ာက္စာေတာ္ - အ႐ွင္အာဒိစၥ၀ံသ)

1. …Rājā evaṃ āha [.] atikate aṃtaraṃ

2. …bhūtapuva ta … ma atthakamena vā paṭivedanā vā ta mayā evaṃ kataṃ [.]

3. Save kale bhumjamānasa me orodhanamhi gabhāgāramhi vacamhi vā

4. vinītaṃhi ya ca uyānesu ca savatra paṭivedakā sṭitā atha me janasa.

5. Paṭivedetha iti [.] sarvatā ca janasu athe karomi [.] ya ca kici mukhato

6. añāpayāmi svayaṃ dāpakaṃ vā srāvapākaṃ vā ya vā puna mahāmātresu

7. āyacike āropitaṃ bhavati tāya athāya vivādo nijhatī santo parisāya

8. ānaṇaṃtaraṃ dhu paṭivedetaya me savatā sarve kale eveṃ mayā añāpitaṃ [.] nāsti hi me toso

9. usṭānamhi atha santaraṇāya vā [.] katāvyame hi me savalokahitaṃ [.]

10. … ca puna esa mule usṭānaṃca atha santiraṃā ca [.] nāti hi kamṃataraṃ

11. Save logahitatpā [.] ya ca kinci parākramāmi ahaṃ kiñti bhūtānaṃ ānaṇaṃ gacheyaṃ

12. Idha ca nāni sukhāvayāmi paratrā svagaṃ ārādhayaṃtu [.] ta etāya athāya

13. ayaṃ dhamaṃlipī likhāpitā kiñti ciraṃ tisṭeya iti tarhā ca me putrā potā ca prapotā ca

14. anuvataraṃ savalokahitāya [.] dukaraṃ tu ida aññatra agena parākamena. (Edicts of King Aśoka: A New Vision – Meena Talim)

မင္းတကာတို႔ ခ်စ္ၾကည္ ေလးစားအပ္၍႕ ပိယဒႆီဟု ၀ွ႔ဲခ်ီ-ခပ္ႏွိပ္ အ႐ွင္မဟာကႆပ မေထရ္ျမတ္၏့ ဗ်ာဒိတ္ေတာ္ကို ခံယူ-ရ႐ွိေသာ အေသာက မင္းၾတားျမတ္ႀကီးသည္ ဤသို႔ မိန္႔ခြန္း ျပန္ဆိုေလၿပီ၊ ႏွစ္ဆက္ အသက္ ကာလမ်ားစြာ ၾကာလြန္လွသည္ တိုင္ေအာင္ပင္ အခါေလးျမင့္စြာ မင္းေရးကိစၥ ဆိုင္စပ္ရာမည္သည္၎, မင္း၏့ အမိန္႔-အာဏာကို သင့္-မသင့္ အေၾကာင္းအက်ိဳး ျပန္လွန္ေျပာၾကားျခင္း မည္သည္၎ မျဖစ္ပူးခဲ့ေလ၊ ထို႔ေၾကာင့္, ငါဘုရင္ မင္းတရားသည္ ဤဆိုလတၱံ အတိုင္း အမိန္႔ ထုတ္ျပန္ေတာ္မူ၏၊ မည္သည့္အခါမဆို, ငါမင္းတရားျမတ္ ပြဲးေတာ္ တယ္စဥ္အခိုက္ျဖစ္ေစ, ေမာင္းမေဆာင္၌ စံေနေတာ္မူခိုက္ျဖစ္ေစ, မိဘုရားႀကီးငယ္ႏွင့္ ေမာင္းမအေပါင္းတို႔ သားဖြား႐ံု၌႕ သြားေရာက္ေနခိုက္ျဖစ္ေစ, ခရီးယာယီ ထြက္စံ လွည့္လည္ခိုက္ျဖစ္ေစ, ဥယ်ာဥ္ေတာ္၌႕ အေပ်ာ္အပါး ထြက္စံေတာ္မူခိုက္ျဖစ္ေစ, အားလံုးေသာ ေနရာတိုင္း၌႕  ျပန္ၾကားတင္ေလွ်ာက္ဆိုမည့္ သတင္းျပန္, သတင္းေပး အရာ႐ွိမ်ား ခန္႔ထားတည္႐ွိကုန္၍႕, ငါဘုရင္၏့ ကိစၥမႈခင္းကို ျဖစ္ေစ, တုိင္းႏိုင္ငံသူမ်ား၏့  မႈခင္းကိစၥကို ျဖစ္ေစ၊ ငါဘုရင္မင္းတရားအား ျပန္ၾကားေလွ်ာက္တင္ၾကေစ ဟု အမိန္႔ထုတ္ဆင့္ေတာ္မူ၏။ ငါမင္းတရားျမတ္သည္ ေနရာတကာ အခါခပ္သိမ္းပင္ တိုင္းႏိုင္ငံသူမ်ား၏့ အက်ိဴးႏွင့္စပ္ေသာ ကိစၥကို ျပဳလုပ္အ့ံ။

ထို႔ျပင္ အမိန္႔ထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္ ထားသည္ကား, ငါဘုရင္ျမတ္က တစံုတရာ ျပဳလုပ္စီမံခြင့္ ႏႈတ္ေတာ္ ႁမြက္ၾကားျခင္းျဖင့္ ကိုယ္တိုင္ ျပဳလုပ္ရမည္ဟု၎, တစံုတဦးအား ေျပာၾကားေစရန္ဟု၎ အာဏာမင္းမိန္႔ ထုတ္ျပန္ထား႐ွိခဲ့အံ့, ထိုသို႔ေသာ အမိန္႔သည္ပင္လည္း မႉးေတာ္မတ္ေတာ္ႀကီး အေပါင္းတို႔က အေဆာတလ်င္ ျပဳလုပ္ဆံုးျဖတ္ရာ၌႕ ထား႐ွိေဆြးေႏြးေစရန္ ျဖစ္ေလသည္၊ ထိုကိစၥႏွင့္ စပ္၍႕ ေဆြးေႏြးတိုင္ပင္ေသာ ပရိတ္သတ္အတြင္း၌႕ မညီမမွ် ယူဆကြဲးလြဲးၾကျခင္း, ျပန္လည္စဥ္းစားထိုက္ျခင္း ျဖစ္ခြင့္ထင္႐ွားျဖစ္ေပၚခဲ့အ့ံ, ငါမင္းတရား၏့ အပါးေတာ္ၿမဲး ကိုယ္ရံေတာ္အား သိေစျခင္းျဖင့္ ငါ မင္းတရားအား ျပန္တုန္႔ေလွ်ာက္တင္ၾကေစဟု ေနရာခပ္သိမ္း အခါမေ႐ြး ဤအတိုင္း ငါမင္းတရား မိန္႔ၾကားေတာ္မူ၏။

ထိုအေရးႏွင့္ စပ္၍ ထင္း႐ွားႁမြက္ဆိုေတာ္မူလိုသည္ကား ငါၾတားမင္းျမတ္မွာ တိုင္းသာျပည္သူတို႔ကိစၥ၌႕ ထႂကြလံု႔လစိုက္မႈ ျပဳလုပ္ရမည္ကို၎, ထုိသို႔ေသာ တိုင္းသားျပည္သူတို႔ကိစၥကို စဥ္းစားဆင္ျခင္ေရးအတြက္ ျပဳလုပ္ရမည္ကို၎ ေၾကာက္႐ြံ႕စိုးရိမ္ျခင္း အလ်င္း ႐ွိေတာ္မမူေခ်၊ အေၾကာင္းအမွန္ ျပန္ၾကားဖြယ္ကား, အားလံုးတိုင္းေနျပည္သူတို႔ စည္းပြားတုိးတက္ျခင္းသည္သာ ငါဘုရင္မင္းတရား၏့ လိုအပ္ေသာ ကိစၥႀကီး ျဖစ္ေလသည္၊ ထို႔ျပင္, ထိုသို႔ ေဖာ္ျပခဲ့ေသာ တိုင္းႏိုင္ငံသူတို႔ စီးပြားတိုးတက္ေရး မည္သည္လည္း အဖန္ဖန္ အထပ္ထပ္ ထႂကြလံု႔လျပဳျခင္း, ဆုိင္စပ္သည့္ကိစၥကို စဥ္းစားဆံုးျဖတ္ျခင္း, ဤအေရးသာ ထေျမာက္ၿပီးစီးေၾကာင္း မူလျဖစ္ေလသည္၊ ထုိသို႔ ျဖစ္ေစခြင့္ သင့္လွေပ၏, အားလံုး ႏိုင္ငံသုတို႔ အစီးအပြားထက္ ပိုလြန္ေသာ ကိစၥတပါးမည္သည္ ငါမင္းတရားမွာ အျခား႐ွိေတာ္ မမူေခ်။

“တိုင္းႏိုင္ငံသူတို႔ အက်ိဳးေတာ္ျဖစ္ ျပဳလုပ္ေရးသာ ငါမင္းတရား၏့ ကိစၥ”ဟူရာ၌ သိမွတ္ရန္ကား ဤသို႔ တိုင္းႏိုင္ငံသူတို႔ ကိစၥကို ငါမင္းတရားက ေဆာင္႐ြက္ျပဳလုပ္ေသာ္သာ တိုင္းႏိုင္ငံသူတို႔က ငါ့အား ကိုးစားရာ မင္းဟု ျမတ္ႏိုးတနာ တင္ေျမႇာက္ထားၾကျခင္းအတြက္ ၎တို႔ ေႂကြးၿမီမွ လြတ္ကင္းဖြယ္ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ဆိုေတာ္မူလို၏၊ ထို႔ျပင္, ဤပစၥကၡတ္၌႕ တစံုတရာ ခ်မ္းသာရျခင္း, ေနာင္တမလြန္၌႕ နတ္ျပည္မွာ ေပ်ာ္ေမြ႕ နစ္ၿခိဳက္ႏိုင္ျခင္းလည္း ျဖစ္ရမည္ဟု ဆိုေတာ္မူလို၏၊ ထို႔ေၾကာင့္, ဤဆိုခဲ့ၿပီး အက်ိဳးအတြက္ ဤတရားေက်ာက္စာကို ၾကာျမင့္အ႐ွည္တည္ေနေစရန္ ထိုတရားအတိုင္း ငါမင္းတရား၏့ သားေတာ္ အစဥ္ ေျမးေတာ္အဆက္ ျမစ္ေတာ္အၫြန္႔ အဓြန္႔႐ွည္စြာ တိုင္းႏိုင္ငံသူတို႔ အစီးအပြား၌ အားထုတ္လံုးပမ္းၾကေစကုန္၊ စင္စစ္ တမူကား ထူးကဲျမင့္ျမတ္ေသာ အားစိုက္ျခင္းလံု႔လႏွင့္ ကင္း၍ ဤတိုင္းသူတို႔ အက်ိဳးကို ျပဳလုပ္ႏိုင္ရန္ ခဲးယဥ္းလွေလသတည္း။---ဆင္ျဖဴေတာ္ ေက်ာက္စာေတာ္။ (အေသာကမင္းတရားႀကီး၏ အေသာကေက်ာက္စာေတာ္ -အ႐ွင္အာဒိစၥ၀ံသ)

နတ္တို႔ ခ်စ္ျမတ္ႏိုးေသာ ပိယဒသီမင္းႀကီးသည္ ဤသို႔ မိန္႔ေတာ္မူ၏၊

လြန္ေလၿပီးကာလ၌ အခါခပ္သိမ္း အမႈကိစၥတို႔ကို ေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္း၊ ေလွ်ာက္ထား အစီရင္ခံျခင္းဟူ၍ မ႐ွိခဲ့ဘူေခ်။  ယခုေသာ္ ငါဘုရင္မင္းျမတ္သည္ ဤသို႔ စီမံထားေလၿပီ။

ငါသည္ စားေတာ္ေခၚေနသည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ အတြင္းေဆာင္၌ ႐ွိေနသည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ စက္ခန္းေဆာင္၌ ႐ွိသည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ သန္႔သက္ရာ၌ ႐ွိသည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ တုိင္းခန္းလွည့္လည္ေနသည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ ဥယာဥ္ေတာ္၌ ႐ွိသည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ ေနရာခပ္သိမ္းတို႔၌ပင္၊ အခါခပ္သိ္မ္း နားခံေတာ္တို႔သည္ တိုင္းသူျပည္သားတို႔၏ အမႈကိစၥဟူသမွ်ကို ငါ့အား တင္ေလွ်ာက္ေစသတည္း။ ငါသည္ တုိင္းသူျပည္သားတို႔၏ အမႈကိစၥဟူသမွ်ကို ေနရာမေ႐ြး ေဆာင္႐ြက္ပါအ့့ံ။

ငါသည္ အလွဴေတာ္အမတ္အား၎၊ သံေတာ္ဆင့္အား၎၊ တစံုတရာကို ႏႈတ္အားျဖင့္ အမိန္႔ေပးေသာအခါျဖစ္ေစ၊ သို႔မဟုတ္၊ အမတ္ႀကီးတို႔က ထိုအမိန္႔မ်ားကို အေရးႀကးသျဖင့္ တဖန္ ဆင့္ဆိုေသာအခါ၌ျဖစ္ေစ၊ ၀ိဝါဒေသာ္၎၊ စင္းစားဖြယ္(သံသယ)ေသာ္၎ ႐ွိခဲ့ေသာ္ အမတ္အစည္းအေဝးက ငါ့အား လ်င္စြာသာလွ်င္ ေနရာမေ႐ြး အခါမေ႐ြး ေလွ်ာက္တင္ေစသတည္း။ ဤသို႔ ငါအမိန္႔ ခ်မွတ္ထားေတာ္မူေလၿပီ။

ထႂကြလံု႔လျပဳျခင္းႏွင့္ အမႈကိစၥတို႔အား ထေျမာက္ေအာင္ ေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္း၌ ငါေရာင့္ရဲသည္ဟူ၍ မ႐ွိ၊ ခပ္သိမ္းေသာ ေလာက၏ အက်ိဳးကို ေဆာင္႐ြက္ရန္ ငါရည္႐ြယ္လ်က္႐ွိ၏။ ဤသည္တို႔ကား ငါ၏ ထႂကြလံု႔လျပဳျခင္းႏွင့္ အမႈကိစၥတို႔အား ထေျမာက္ေအာင္ ေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းတို႔၏ အေၾကာင္းရင္းတို႔ေပတည္း။ ခပ္သိမ္းေသာ ေလာက၏ အက်ိဳးကို ေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းမွ တပါး ငါ၌ အျခားေဆာင္႐ြက္ဖြယ္ရာဟူ၍ မ႐ွိ။ အဘဲ့ေၾကာင္ ဤသို႔ ငါႀကိဳးစား အားထုတ္ပါသနည္းဆိုေသာ္ ငါသည္ မိမိအေပၚ၌ တင္႐ွိေသာ သတၱ၀ါတို႔၏ ေႂကြးမွ ကင္းလြတ္၍ ၎တို႔အား ဤဘ၀၌ ခ်မ္းသာကို ရေစ၍ ေနာင္ဘ၀၌လည္း နတ္ျပည္သို႔ ေရာက္ေစရန္ ျဖစ္၏။

ဤအက်ိဳးငွာ ဤတရားကဗ်ည္းကို ေရးထိုးေစ၏။ အ႐ွည္ တည္ၿမဲပါေစသတည္း ငါ၏ သားေျမးအဆက္အႏြယ္တို႔သည္ ခပ္သိမ္းေသာ ေလာက၏ အက်ိဳးငွာ အားထုတ္ၾကေစကုန္သတည္း။

သည္းစြာ အားထုတ္ျခင္းႏွင့္ ကင္း၍လည္း ဤအမႈကို ေဆာင္႐ြက္ရန္ ခဲယဥ္းေခ်၏။ (အေသာကေက်ာက္စာမ်ား-ဦးဖိုးလတ္)

ေဒဝါနံပိယ ပိယဒသီမင္းသည္ ဤသို႔မိန္႔ဆို၏။ ေ႐ွးအခါက အမႈကိစၥအားလံုးတြင္ ေလွ်ာက္တင္ျခင္းမ႐ွိခဲ့။ ယခုအခါ ငါသည္ ဤသို႔ ျပဳ၏။ မည္သည့္အခါမဆို ငါစားေသာက္ေနသည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ အတြင္းေဆာင္၌ ေနသည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ မိန္းမေဆာင္၌ ေနသည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ အိပ္ေဆာင္၀င္သည္ ျဖစ္ေစ၊ လမ္းေလွ်ာက္ထြက္သည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ ခရီးထြက္သည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ ဥယ်ာဥ္ထြက္သည္ ျဖစ္ေစ၊ နာခံေတာ္တို႔သည္ ျပည္သူ႔ကိစၥဟူသမွ်ကို ငါ့အား ေလွ်ာက္ၾကားရမည္။ ငါသည္ အလံုးစံု အကုန္ျပဳလုပ္မည္။

ငါကိုယ္တိုင္ အလွဴေတာ္အမတ္, သံေတာ္ဆင့္အမတ္တို႔ကို တစံုတရာ ႏႈတ္မိန္႔ေပးရာ သို႔မဟုတ္ အမတ္တို႔  အေရးတႀကီး စီမံျပဳလုပ္ရာတို႔၌ အျငင္းပြားဖြယ္, စဥ္းစားဖြယ္, ယံုမွားဖြယ္႐ွိပါလွ်င္ လႊတ္ေတာ္က အခ်ိန္မေ႐ြး အလ်င္အျမန္ ငါ့အား ေလွ်ာက္တင္ၾကရမည္။ ငါ့အား လံု႔လႀကိဳးကုတ္ အားထုတ္ရာ၌ ေရာင့္ရဲျခင္း မ႐ွိ။ ငါသည္ ေလာက၏ အစီးအပြား ျပဳလုပ္ရျခင္းကို ငါ၏ တာ၀န္ဟု ယူဆ၏။ ငါ့အား ေလာက၏ အစီးအပြား ေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းမွတပါး အျခားအမႈကိစၥ မ႐ွိ။ ယင္းသို႔ အားထုတ္ေဆာင္႐ြက္ျခင္းကား ငါသည္ လူအမ်ား၏ ေႂကြးၿမီမွ လြတ္ကင္းရန္ျဖစ္၍ လူတို႔သည္ ဤေလာက၌လည္း ခ်မ္းသာၾကၿပီး တမလြန္ေလာက၌လည္း နတ္႐ြာသို႔ ေရာက္ၾကေစရန္ ျဖစ္၏။

ဤအက်ိဳးအတြက္ ဤတရားစာကို ေရးေစ၏။ ယင္းသည္ အဓြန္႔႐ွည္စြာ တည္ပါေစသတည္း။ ငါ၏ သား, ေျမး, ျမစ္ အဆက္ဆက္တို႔သည္ လူအမ်ား၏ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားအတြက္ ဆက္လက္ အားထုတ္ၾကေလာ့။ စင္စစ္ ႀကိဳးစား အားထုတ္ျခင္းႏွင့္ ကင္း၍ ဤအမႈကို ျပဳလုပ္ရန္ ခဲယဥ္း၏။ (သိရီဓမၼာေသာကမင္းတရားႀကီး၏ ကိုးတိုင္းကိုးဌာန ဗုဒၶဓမၼႏိုင္ငံေတာ္-ဦးေသာ္ဇင္)

Thus saith His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King: 'A long period has elapsed during which in the past business was not carried on or information brought in at all times. So by me the arrangement has been made that at all times, when I am eating, or in the ladies' apartments, or in my private room, or in the mews, or in my [?] conveyance, or in the pleasure-grounds, everywhere the persons appointed to give information should keep me informed about the affairs of the people.

And in all places I attend to the affairs of the people. And, if, perchance, by word of mouth I personally command a donation or injunction; or, again, when a matter of urgency has been committed to the High Officers, and in that matter a division or adjournment takes place in the Council, then without delay information must be given to me in all places, at all times. Such is my command.

Because I never feel satisfaction in my exertions and dispatch of business. For work I must for the welfare of all the folk; and of that, again, the root is energy and the dispatch of business; for nothing is more essential than the welfare of all the folk. And whatsoever efforts I make they are made that I may attain release from my debt to animate beings, so that while in this world I make some persons happy, they may win heaven in the world beyond. For that purpose have I caused this scripture of the Law to be written in order that it may endure, while my sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons may take action for the welfare of all folk. That, however, is difficult save by the utmost exertion.' (Asoka, the Buddhist Emperor of India - V. A. Smith)

Thus saith His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King: In times past, there was not before at all hours discharge of administrative business or the receiving of reports. So by me has thus been arranged: at all hours, when I am eating, or in the harem, or in the inner apartments, or even in the ranches, or in the place of religious instruction, or in the parks, everywhere, Prativedakas are posted with instructions to report on the affairs of my people. In all places do I dispose of the affairs of the people. And if perchance by word of mouth I personally command a donation or a proclamation; or again, if an urgent matter has been assigned to the Mahamatras and if in connection therewith a debate or deliberation takes place in the Parisat then without a moment's interval should it be reported to me in all places, at all hours. Thus has been ordered by me. For there is no satisfaction of mine in exertion and dispatch of business. My highest duty is, indeed, the promotion of the good of all. Of that, again, the root is this: exertion and dispatch of business. There is no higher work than the promotion of the commonweal. And if I am at all making any exertion, it is in order that I may obtain the discharge of debt to all living beings, and make them happy in this world, while they may attain heaven in the world beyond. Now, for this purpose is this religious edict inscribed that it may last for ever, and that my sons, and grandsons, and great-grandsons may follow it for the good of all. But this is difficult of achievement except by great and sustained effort. (Asoka - R.K. Mookerji)

Thus speaks the Beloved of the Gods, the king Piyadassi: In the past the quick dispatch of business and the receipt of reports did not take place at all times. But I have now arranged it thus. At all times, whether I am eating, or am in the women’s apartments, or in my inner apartments, or at the cattle-shed, or in my carriage, or in my gardens—wherever I may be, my informants should keep me in touch with public business. Thus everywhere I transact public business. And whatever I may order by word of mouth, whether it concerns a donation or a proclamation, or whatever urgent matter is entrusted to my officers, if there is any dispute or deliberation about it in the Council, it is to be reported to me immediately, at all places and at all times.

This I have commanded. In hard work and the dispatch of business alone, I find no satisfaction. For I consider that I must promote the welfare of the whole world, and hard work and the dispatch of business are the means of doing so. Indeed there is no better work than promoting the welfare of the whole world. And whatever may be my great deeds, I have done them in order to discharge my debt to all beings. I work for their happiness in this life, that in the next they may gain heaven. For this purpose has this inscription of Dhamma been engraved. May it endure long. May my sons, grandsons, and great grandsons strive for the welfare of the whole world. But this is difficult without great effort. (Asoka and the decline of the Mauryas - Romila Thapar)

Thus saith King Priyadarsi, the Beloved of the Gods; in the times gone by, the discharge of duties and reporting was not at all times. So by me has thus been managed at all hours and in all places, whether I am eating or I am in the Harem, in the inner chamber, or in the cattle shed or in the place of religious instruction or in the garden, everywhere, the reporters should report people’s business to me. At all places I discharge the business of the people. And when by word of my mouth I order for a donation, or a proclamation, or, again, an urgent matter imposes itself on the Mahamatras, and if it envolves a discussion in the assembly then it should be reported to me at all places and at all hours without delay. I am never contented with my efforts or with my discharge of public business. My chief duty is the welfare of the entire world. Of that, again, fundamentals are exertion and discharge of business. There is no higher duty than the welfare of the people. And whatever efforts I make, it is in order to satisfy myself that I have discharged my duty to all animate beings so that they may gain heaven in the other world. So, for this purpose, this edict of morality has been caused to be inscribed that it may endure for a long time and that my sons, grandsons and great grandsons may follow it for the welfare of all mankind. But this is difficult to obtain except through intense exertion. (Inscriptions of Asoka - N. P. Rastogi)

1. King Devānaṃppiya Piyadassi speaks thus:

In the time past, never in the past …

2. There was an act of fulfilling affair and (king’s men) reporting it, but all has been done by me.

3. All the matter should be reported to me, about the people, at all times, while I am eating, in the inner chamber, even at campaign

4. or I am being carried (in the palanquin) towards the park. Everywhere reporters are posted (standing). I shall be informed about the people.

5. I shall always look after the benefit of the people; whatever has to be said verbally, I shall proclaim it, even about bestowing charity.

6. I shall (myself) give alms to disciples (religious men) and again when Mahāmattās come forward and find difficult to slove the matters, and

7. In the case of petitioner, who begs of favour (mercy) and thereby dispute arises for favourable disposition then it should be informed to me even in the midst of assembly.

8. I should be informed about everything and at all time. This is my order. I am not happy (do not get pleasure), otherwise

9. If, dispute arises and not pacified. Then it is my duty and has to be performed for the sake of benefit of the people.

10. Again if the roots (of disputes) arise then it has to be investigated and pacified. Indeed there is no better act than this!

11. For the welfare of all men – whatever little effort I take it an act of repaying the debt which I owe to people.

12. Let them (people) exert for various pleasures here and attain heaven in the next world.

13. For this purpose I have caused this scripture to be written. Let the fame last long and my sons, grandsons and great-grandsons

14. follow this for the welfare of men. It is difficult to perform this without great valour. (Edicts of King Aśoka: A New Vision – Meena Talim)

Major Rock Edict of Asoka (5)

 

ေဒ၀ါနံ ပိေယာ ပိယဒသိ ရာဇာ ဧ၀ံ အာဟ, ကလာဏံ ဒုကရံ ေယာ အာဒိကေရ ကလာဏသ, ေသာ ဒုကရံ ကေရာတိ၊ ေသ မယာ ဗဟံု ကလာဏံ ကတံ၊ တံ ေယ မမ ပုၾတာ စ ေပါၾတာစ ပေပါၾတာ စ, ေတဟိ  ေယ အပစာ အဆံတိ, အာ၀ ကပံ, တထာ ေယ အႏု၀တိ သံတိ, တထာ ေတ သုကတံ ကဗံတိ၊ ေယ တု ဧကေဒသံ ပိ ဟာပယိသံတိ, ေသ ဒုကဋံ ကဗံတိ၊ သုကရံ ဟိ ပါေပဟိ နာမ သုပဒါလေယ၊ ေသ အတိကံတံ အံတရံ န ဘူတပု၀ံ ဓံမ-မဟာမာတာ နာမ၊ ေသ မယာ ေတဒသ၀သာ ဘိသိေတန (ေမ) ဓံမ-မဟာမတာ နာမ ကတာ၊ ေတ သ၀-ပါသံေဍသု ဗ်ာပတာ, ဓံမာ’ဓိဌာနာယ စ ဓံမ၀ဎိယာ ဟိတ-သုခါယ စ။

ဓံမ-ယုတာ စ ေယာန-ကံ ေဗာဇ-ဂံဓာရာနံ ရ႒ီက-ပိထိနိကာနံ ေယ စာ’ပိ အံေန အပရံတာ ျဗာဟၼဏနိေဘသု အနာေထသု ဗုေဎသု (စ) ဟိတ-သုခါယ, ဓံမ-ယုတာနံ အပလိေဗာဓာယ ဗ်ာပတာ၊ ေတ ဗံဓန-၀ဓသ ပဋိ၀ိဓာနာယ အပလိေဗာဓာယ ေမာခါယ စ အယံ အႏုဗံဓံ ပဇာ၀တိ (၀ါ) ကတာ’ဘိကာေရာ’တိ ၀ါ ေထေရာ (မဟာလေကာ)’တိ ၀ါ ဗ်ာပတာ၊ ေတ ပါဋလိပုေတ (ဟိ) စ ဗာဟိေရသု စ နဂေရသု သေ၀သု ၾသေရာဓေနသု ေမ ဧ၀ံ ပိ ဘာတိနံ ေမ ဘဂိနီနံ, ေယ ၀ါပိ အံေနသု ၀ါ နာတိသု သ၀တ ဗ်ာပတာ၊ ေတ ေယာ အယံ ဓံမနိသိေတာ’တိ ၀ါ, ဓံမာ’ဓိထာေနာ’တိ ၀ါ, ဒါနသံယုေတာ’တိ ၀ါ, သ၀-ပုဌ၀ိယ ၀ိဇိေတ မမ ဓံမယုတသိ ဗ်ာပတာ၊ ေတ ဓံမ-မဟာမာတာ ဧတာယ အယံ ဓံမလိပိ လိခိတာ, စိရဌတိကာ ေဟာတု, တထာ စ ေမ ပဇာ အႏု၀တ(တံ) တု။ (အေသာကမင္းတရားႀကီး၏ အေသာကေက်ာက္စာေတာ္ - အ႐ွင္အာဒိစၥ၀ံသ)

1. Devanāṃpriyo Piyadasi raja evaṃ āha [.] kalāṇaṃ dukaraṃ [.] yo adikaro kaḷānasa so dukaraṃ karoti [.]

2. Ta mayā bahu kalāṇa katāṃ [.] naṃ mama putā ca potā ca paraṃca tena ya me apacaṃ āva saṃvaṭakapā anuvatisare tathā

3. so sukaṭaṃ kāsati [.] yo tu eva dese pi hāpesati so dukatāṃ kāsati [.] sukaraṃ hi pāpaṃ [.] atikāntaṃ aṃtaraṃ

4. na bhūtapravaṃ dhammahāmatā nāma [.] ta mayā traidasa vāsabhisitena dhammamāhamātā kata [.] te savapāsaṃḍesu vyāpatā dhāmadhisṭānāya

5. ... dhammayutasa ca yoṇakaṃbojagandharānāṃ risṭikapeteṇikānaṃ ye vā pi añe āparatā [.] bhatamayesu

6. vā … sukhāya dahmmayutānaṃ aparigodhāya vyāpatā te [.] bandhanabadhas paṭividhānāya

7. … prajā katābhīkāresu vā thairesu vā vyāpatā te [.] paṭalipute ca badhirasu ca

8. … ye vā pi me aññe ñātikā sarvata vyāpatā te [.] yo ayaṃ dhaṃinistrito ti vā

9. … te dhaṃmahāmatā [.] etāya athāya ayaṃ dhamalipī likhitā (Edicts of King Aśoka: A New Vision – Meena Talim)

မင္းတကာတို႔ ခ်စ္ၾကည္ ေလးစားအပ္၍႕ ပိယဒႆီဟု ၀ွ႔ဲခ်ီ-ခပ္ႏွိပ္ အ႐ွင္မဟာကႆပ မေထရ္ျမတ္၏့ ဗ်ာဒိတ္ေတာ္ကို ခံယူ-ရ႐ွိေသာ အေသာက မင္းၾတားျမတ္ႀကီး ဤသို႔ မိန္႔ႁမြက္ေတာ္မူၿပီ၊ ေကာင္းမႈကုသိုလ္မည္သည္ ျပဳလုပ္ႏိုင္ခဲးရကား ထိုေကာင္းမႈကို စတည္ ျပဳလုပ္သူသည္ ျပဳႏိုင္ခဲးေသာ ကိစၥကို ျပဳသည္ မည္၏၊ ထို႔ေၾကာင့္ ငါ မင္းျမတ္သည္ ေကာင္းမႈကုသိုလ္ မ်ားစြာကို ျပဳလုပ္ေတာ္မူၿပီ၊ ထို ငါ့ ေကာင္းမႈေတာ္မ်ားကို ငါမင္းတရား၏ သားေတာ္အစဥ္, ေျမးေတာ္အဆက္, ျမစ္ေတာ္ အၫြန္႔တို႔သည္၄င္း, ၄င္းတို႔ႏွင့္တကြ ငါ၏ ေနာက္၌႕ ဆက္ခံ စံေနကုန္ေသာ ေဆြေတာ္ မ်ိဳးေတာ္တို႔သည္၄င္း ဤကပၸါ အဆံုးတိုင္ ထို႔နည္းတူသာလွ်င္ တုမႈ လိုက္နာကုန္ၾကအံ့, ၄င္းတို႔သည္လည္း ျပဳႏိုင္ခဲးေသာ ေကာင္းမႈကိုသာ ျပဳသည္ မည္ကုန္၏။

ထိိုသို႔ မဟုတ္ပဲး, ငါ့အမိန္႔ေတာ္ အခ်ိဳ႕-အ၀က္မွ်ကိုပင္ ဆုတ္ယုတ္ ေလ်ာ့ပါးေစကုန္ျငားအံ့, ထိုသူတို႔သည္ မေကာင္းမႈကို ျပဳသည္ မည္ကုန္၏၊ ထိုစကားမွန္၏, ယုတ္မာဆိုး၀ါးသူတို႔သည္ မည္သည့္ ေကာင္းမြန္စြာ ျပဳလုပ္အပ္သည့္ ေကာင္းမႈကို ဖ်က္ဆီးရန္ လြယ္ကုန္၏၊ ႐ွည္ျမင့္လွစြာ အခါကာလ ကုန္လြန္ခဲ့သည္ တိုင္ေအာင္ တရားေတာ္ၾကပ္ အမတ္ႀကီးတို႔ မည္သည္ မ႐ွိစပူးေခ်၊ ငါဘုရင္ မင္းျမတ္သည္ အဘိသိက္ခံ၍ တဆဲ့သံုးႏွစ္ေျမာက္အခါ၌ တရားေတာ္၏့ ႀကီးက်ယ္ ျမင့္ျမတ္ေရးအတြက္ တရားႀကီးၾကပ္ အမတ္ႀကီးတို႔ကို ခန္႔ထားေတာ္မူခဲ့ၿပီ၊ ထိုအမတ္ႀကီးတို႔ကို ဗုဒၶဘာသာမွ တပါး အျခားအယူ၀ါဒ အထူးထူး႐ွိသူတို႔ အတြင္းတြင္ တရားေတာ္မွန္ တာ႐ွည္ေလးျမင့္ တည္ထြန္းရန္၄င္း, ကပၸါသူကပၸါသား အမ်ားသူငါတို႔ ခ်မ္းသာေရး တိုးတက္ေစရန္၄င္း အမႈေတာ္ ထမ္း႐ြက္ေစကုန္ၿပီ။

ထိုမွတပါး ထိုတရားႀကီးၾကပ္ အမတ္ႀကီးတို႔ကိုု ေယာနကတိုင္း, ကေမၺာဇတိုင္း, ဂႏၶာရတိုင္း, မဟာရရာဌီတိုင္း, ဂူဇရာ႒ီတုိင္း, ပိထိနိက္တိုင္းသူတို႔ အတြင္း၌၄င္း, ဤမွတပါး အပရႏၲတိုင္းသားတို႔ အတြင္း၌၄င္း, ထိုထိုတိုင္းတို႔၌ ေနထ္ိုင္ကုန္ေသာ ပုဏၰား, သူႂကြယ္ ကိုးစားရာမဲ့သူ အိုမင္း ႀကီးရင့္သူတို႔၏့ စီးပြား-ခ်မ္းသာေရးအတြက္၄င္း, တရားက်င့္ေဆာင္သူတို႔အား အေႏွာင့္အယွက္ကင္းရန္၄င္း, အမႈေတာ္ ထမ္းေစကုန္ၿပီ၊ “ဤသူကား ေက်းဇူးျပဳလုပ္ေပသူ”ဟု၄င္း , ဤသူကား ေက်းဇူးသိတတ္သူဟု၄င္း, ဤသူကား ဂုဏ္အ႐ြယ္ ႀကီးသူတည္းဟု၄င္း (သိ႐ွိၾက၍) ေႏွာင္ဖြဲ႕ျခင္း, သတ္ျဖတ္ျခင္းကို တားျမစ္ပိတ္ပင္ရန္၄င္း, မေႏွာင့္မယွက္ လြတ္လပ္ေစရန္၄င္း ထိုတရားႀကီးၾကပ္ အမတ္ႀကီးတို႔ကို အမႈေတာ္ထမ္းေစကုန္ၿပီ။

ထိုတရား ႀကီးၾကပ္အမတ္ႀကီးတို႔ကို ဤပါဋလိပုတ္ျပည္ေတာ္၌၄င္း, ပါဋလိပုတ္ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္မွ အပ အျခား အားလံုးေသာ ၿမိဳ႔တို႔၌၄င္း, ငါဘုရင္၏့ နန္းတြင္းသူ အေပါင္းတို႔၌႕၄င္း, ထို႔အတူ ငါဘုရင္ မင္းတရား၏့ ညီေတာ္, ေနာင္ေတာ္, အမေတာ္, ႏွမေတာ္တို႔အတြင္းတြင္၄င္း, ယင္းသည့္ သူအားလံုးတို႔အတြင္း၌ အမႈေတာ္ ထမ္းေစကုန္ၿပီ၊ ငါဘုရင္မင္းတရား၏့ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ အရပ္ရပ္ တရားက်င့္ေရးႏွင့္ စပ္ဆိုင္ရာ ဌာန၌ တည္မွီရာ ျပဳလုပ္သည္, မည္သူသည္ အလွဴဒါနေရး၌ အားထုတ္လံုးပမး္ေနသည္ဟု၄င္း, ဤအားလံုးသိႏိုင္ရန္ ထု္တရား ႀကီးၾကပ္ေရးအမတ္ႀကီးတို႔ကို အမႈေတာ္ ထမ္းေစကုန္ၿပီ။ ဤသို႔ တရားေတာ္၏့ တိုးတက္ျမင့္ျမတ္ေရး အက်ိဳးငွာသာလွ်င္, ဤတရားစာေတာ္ကို ေရးသားထား႐ွိခဲ့သည့္ အတိုင္း ဤတရားသည္ ႐ွည္လ်ားစြာ တည္ေနေစသတည္း၊ ထိုတရားအတိုင္းလည္း ငါဘုရင္၏့ တိုင္းသူျပည္သားအားလံုး လိုက္နာၾကေစသတည္း။ (အေသာကမင္းတရားႀကီး၏ အေသာကေက်ာက္စာေတာ္ - အ႐ွင္အာဒိစၥ၀ံသ)

နတ္တို႔ ခ်စ္ျမတ္ႏိုးေသာ ပိယဒသီ မင္းႀကီး မိန္႔ေတာ္မူသည္မွာ--

ေကာင္းမႈကို ျပဳရန္ ခဲယဥ္း၏၊ ေကာင္းမႈကို ျပဳေသာသူသည္ ခဲယဥ္းေသာအမႈကို ျပဳသည္မည္၏။ ငါသည္ မ်ားစြာေသာ ေကာင္းမႈတို႔ကို ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ေလၿပီ။ ငါ၏ သားေျမးတို႔ႏွင့္ ၄င္းတို႔၏ အဆက္အႏြယ္တို႔သည္ ကပၸါတည္သ၍ ကာလပတ္လံုး ငါ၏ နည္းတူ လုိက္နာေဆာင္႐ြက္ၾကေသာ္ ေကာင္းမႈကို ျပဳသည္ မည္လတ့ံ။ ဤအမိန္႔၏ တစိတ္တေဒသမွ်ကိုပင္ ေဖာက္ဖ်က္ က်ဴးလြန္ေသာ သူသည္ကား မေကာင္းမႈကို ျပဳသည္မည္သလတံ့။ မေကာင္းဆိုးယုတ္ေသာ အမႈတို႔ကိုကား ျပဳလုပ္ေဆာင္႐ြက္လြယ္၏။

ေ႐ွး လြန္ၿပီးေသာ ကာလတို႔၌ ဓမၼမဟာမာတာေခၚ တရားအမတ္ႀကီးမ်ားဟူ၍ မ႐ွိခဲ့ဘူးေခ်။ ငါ အဘိသိက္ခံသည္မွ တစ္ဆယ့္သံုးႏွစ္ေျမာက္၌ ဓမၼမဟာမာတာေခၚ တရားအမတ္ႀကီးမ်ားကို ခန္႔ထားခဲ့ေလၿပီ။ ထိုအမတ္ႀကီးမ်ားသည္ တရားတည္တံ့ခိုင္ၿမဲေစရန္၄င္း၊ တရားကို တိုးတက္ျပန္႔ပြားေစရန္၄င္း၊ တရားက်င့္သံုးေဆာက္တည္သူတို႔ႏွင့္တကြ၊ ေယာန၊ ကေမၺာဇ၊ ဂႏၶာရႏွင့္ အျခားတိုင္းစြန္ျပည္ပသားတို႔၏ စီးပြားခ်မ္းသာအလို႔ငွာ၄င္း၊ အလံုးစံုေသာ အယူ၀ါဒဂိုဏ္းတို႔၌ပင္ ေဆာင္႐ြက္လ်က္ ႐ွိၾကေလၿပီ။

အေစအပါးႏွင့္ အ႐ွင္သခင္၊ ရဟန္းပုဏၰားႏွင့္ အလုပ္အေကၽြး၊ ခိုကိုးရာမဲ့သူ၊ သက္႐ြယ္ႀကီးရင့္အိုမင္းသူတို႔၏ စီးပြားခ်မ္းသာအလို႔ငွာႏွင့္၊ တရားက်င့္သံုး ေဆာက္တည္ေနသူတို႔၏ ေႏွာင့္႐ွက္ကင္းမဲ့ျခင္း အလို႔ငွာလည္း (ထုိအမတ္ႀကီးမ်ား) ေဆာင္႐ြက္လ်က္႐ွိၾကကုန္၏။

သားသမီးမ်ားသူ၊ ႀကီးေလးေသာ အလုပ္တာ၀န္မ်ားကို လုပ္ကိုင္ေဆာင္႐ြက္ေနရသူ၊ အိုမင္းမစြမ္း႐ွိသူတို႔အား ေႏွာင္ဖြဲ႕ကြပ္မ်က္ျခင္းမွ တားဆီး၍၊ အေႏွာင့္အ႐ွက္မ႐ွိ၊ လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္ ရရန္လည္း ထုိအမတ္ႀကီးမ်ား ေဆာင္႐ြက္လ်က္ ႐ွိၾကကုန္၏။

ဤ (ပါဋလိပုတ္ျပည္)ႏွင့္ ျပင္ပၿမိဳ႕တို႔၀ယ္၊ ငါ၏ ညီေတာ္ ႏွမေတာ္ႏွင့္ အျခား ေဆြေတာ္မ်ိဳးေတာ္တို႔၏ နန္းေတာ္ အိမ္ေတာ္ အေပါင္းတို႔ႏွင့္ ခပ္သိမ္းေသာ အရပ္တို႔၌ပင္ ထုိအမတ္ႀကီးမ်ား ေဆာင္႐ြက္လ်က္႐ွိၾကေပ၏။

ဤသို႔လွ်င္ ငါ၏ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္တ၀ွမ္းလံုးတြင္ တရားတည္တန္႔၍၊ အလွဴစြဲ၌ ၿမဲရန္၊ ထိုတရားအမတ္ႀကီးတို႔သည္ တရားက်င့္သံုးေဆာက္တည္ကာ ေဆာင္႐ြက္လ်က္႐ွိၾကကုန္၏။

ဤအလို႔ငွာ ဤတရားကဗ်ည္းကို ေရးသားေစ၏၊ အဓြန္႔႐ွည္စြာ တည္ၿမဲပါေစသတည္း။ ငါ၏ တုိင္းသူျပည္သားတို႔သည္လည္း ထို႔အတိုင္း လိုက္နာျပဳက်င့္ႏိုင္ၾကပါေစသတည္း။ (အေသာကေက်ာက္စာမ်ား - ဦးဖိုးလတ္)

ေဒ၀ါနံပိယ ပိယဒသီမင္း မိန္႔ၾကား၏။ ေကာင္းမႈကို ျပဳႏိုင္ခဲ၏။ ေကာင္းမႈ ျပဳသူသည္ ျပဳႏိုင္ခဲေသာအမႈကို ျပဳသည္မည္၏။ ငါသည္ ေကာင္းမႈမ်ားစြာ ျပဳခဲ့၏။ ထို႔အတူ ငါ၏သား, ေျမးတို႔ႏွင့္ ယင္းတုိ႔၏ အဆက္အႏြယ္တို႔သည္ ကမၻာပတ္လံုး ငါ၏နည္းတူ လိုက္နာျပဳလုပ္ၾကပါေသာ္ ေကာင္းမႈျပဳသည္မည္လိမ့္မည္။ ငါ၏ စကား အနည္းအပါးမွ်ပင္ ဖ်က္ဆီးသူသည္  မေကာင္းမႈျပဳသည္ မည္လိမ့္မည္။ မေကာင္းမႈကိုကား ျပဳလြယ္ၾက၏။

ေ႐ွးအခါကမူ ဓမၼမဟာမတၱေခၚ တရားေရးအမတ္ မ႐ွိခဲ့ဘူး။ ငါ အဘိသိက္ခံ၍ ၁၃-ႏွစ္ေျမာက္၌ ဓမၼမဟာမတၱကို ခန္႔ထား၏။ ယင္းအမတ္ႀကီးတို႔သည္ ဂိုဏ္းဂဏအားလံုးတို႔၌ တရားတည္ေစရန္, တရားတိုးပြားေစရန္, တရားက်င့္ေဆာင္ၾကေစရန္ႏွင့္ ေယာန, ကေမၺာဇ, ဂႏၶာရ, ရ႒ိက, ပိထိနိကတိုင္းမ်ားႏွင့္ တပါးေသာ အပရႏၲတိုင္းတို႔၏ စီးပြားခ်မ္းသာျဖစ္ေစရန္ ေဆာင္႐ြက္လ်က္႐ွိၾက၏။

ထိုအမတ္တို႔သည္ သူခစား, အ႐ွင္သခင္, ပုဏၰား, သူေဌး, အားကိုးရာမဲ့သူ, အိုမင္းမစြမ္းသူတို႔၏ စီးပြားခ်မ္းသာႏွင့္ တရားက်င့္သူတို႔ ေဘးမေရာက္ေစရန္ ကာကြယ္ေစာင့္ေ႐ွာက္လ်က္႐ွိၾက၏။

ထိုအမတ္တို႔သည္ သားသမီး အၿခံအရံမ်ားသူ, မင္းမႈထမ္းခဲ့ဘူးသူ,အိုမင္းမစြမ္းသူတို႔ ခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္ကြပ္မ်က္ျခင္းမွ လြတ္ကင္း၍ အေႏွာက္အယွက္မ႐ွိ လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္ ရၾကေစရန္ ေဆာင္႐ြက္လ်က္႐ွိၾက၏။

ထိုအမတ္တို႔သည္ ဤျပည္၌၎, အျပင္အပၿမိဳ႕မ်ား၌၎, ငါ၏ နန္းတြင္း၌၎, ငါ၏ ညီ, အကို, အမ,ႏွမတို႔ အိမ္တြင္း၌၎,  အျခားေဆြမ်ိဳးမ်ားႏွင့္ အရပ္ေဒသအားလံုးတို႔၌၎ ေဆာင္႐ြက္လ်က္႐ွိၾက၏။

ငါ၏ ႏိုင္ငံအ၀ွန္း၌ တရားကို အမွီျပဳရန္, တရားကို ေဆာက္တည္ရန္, အလွဴဒါနႏွင့္ ယွဥ္ေစရန္ ထိုမဟာမတၱတို႔ကို ခန္႔ထားျခင္း ျဖစ္၏။ ဤတရားစာသည္ အဓြန္႔႐ွည္စြာ တည္ပါေစသတည္း။ ငါ၏ ျပည္သူတို႔ အစဥ္ လုိက္နာၾကကုန္ေလာ့။ (သိရီဓမၼာေသာကမင္းတရားႀကီး၏ ကိုးတိုင္းကိုးဌာန ဗုဒၶဓမၼႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ - ဦးေသာ္ဇင္)

Thus saith His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King: 'A good deed is a difficult thing. He who is the author of a good deed does a difficult, thing. Now by me many good deeds have been done.

Should my sons, grandsons, and my descendants after them until the end of the aeon [" of universal destruction," G.] follow in this path, they will do well; but in this matter he who shall neglect a part of his duty [or “the commandment "] will do ill, because sin easily develops [" is an easy thing," G.].

Now in all the long time past, officers known as Censors [or "High Officers"] of the Law of Piety never had existed, whereas such Censors were created by me when I had been consecrated thirteen years. Among people of all [non-Buddhist] sects they are employed for the establishment of the Law of Piety, for the increase of that Law, and for the welfare and happiness of the subordinates of the Law of Piety Department [or 1 " the faithful of the true religion," Senart], as well as of the Yavanas, Kambojas, Gandharas, Rashtrikas, Pitinikas, with other nations on my western frontier. Among servants and masters, Brahmans and the wealthy, among the helpless and the aged, they are employed in freeing from worldly cares ["greed," G.] their subordinates [in the department] of the Law of Piety. They are also employed on the revision of [sentences of] imprisonment or execution, in the reduction of penalties, or [the grant of] release, on the grounds of motive, having children, instigation, or advanced years.

Here [in the capital; “at Fatal iputra," G.], and in all provincial towns, in the female establishments of my brothers and sisters, as well as of other relatives, they are everywhere employed. These Censors of the Law of Piety are engaged everywhere in my dominions, among the subordinate officials of that Law. With regard to the concerns of the Law, the establishment of the Law, and the business of almsgiving.

 For that purpose has this scripture of the Law been written, that it may long endure, and that my subjects may act accordingly.' (Asoka, the Buddhist Emperor of India - V. A. Smith)

Thus, saith His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King: The good deed is difficult of performance. He who is the first performer of a good deed achieves something difficult of performance. Now by me many a good deed has been achieved.

Therefore should my sons, grandsons, and my descendants after them up to the end of time follow in my footsteps, they will do really meritorious deeds. But he who in this matter will cause even a portion to diminish will perform an evil deed indeed. Sin must be trodden down.

Now in times past the Dharma-Mahamatras were non-existent previously. But now the Dharma-Mahamatras have been created by me consecrated for thirteen years. They have been employed among all sects for the establishment and growth of Dharma and for the good happiness of those devoted to religion (even) among the Yonas, Kambojas, Gandharas, Rastrikas, Pitinikas and whatever other people of Aparanta or western borderers (of mine there are). They are also employed among the soldiers and their chiefs, Brahmanical ascetics and householders, the destitute, and the infirm by age, for the good and happiness, and freedom from molestation, of those who have applied themselves to Dharma. They are also employed for taking steps against imprisonment, for freedom from molestation, and for granting release, on the ground that one has numerous offspring or is overwhelmed by misfortune or afflicted by age. Here, and in all the outlying towns, in all the harems of my brothers and sisters and whatever other relatives (of mine there are), everywhere are they employed. These Dharma-Mahamatras are employed among those devoted to Dharma in all places within my dominions, whatever one is eager for Dharma or established, in Dharma or properly devoted to charity.

For this purpose has this religious edict been inscribed that it may be everlasting and that my descendants may follow in this path. (Asoka - R.K. Mookerji)

Thus speaks the Beloved of the Gods, the king of Piyadassi: It is hard to do good and he who does good, does a difficult thing. And I have done much good. And my sons, my grandsons and my descendents after them until the end of the world if they will follow my example, they too will do good. But he who neglects my reforms even in part will do wrong, for sin is easy to commit.

In the past there were no officers of Dhamma. It was I who first appointed them, when I had been consecrated for thirteen years. They are busy in all sects, establishing Dhamma, increasing the interest in Dhamma, and attending to the welfare and happiness of those who are devoted to Dhamma, among the Greeks, the Kambojas, the Gandharas, the Risthikas, the Pitinikas, and the other people of the west. Among servants and nobles, brahmans and wealthy householders, among the poor and the aged, they [the officers of Dhamma], are working for the welfare and happiness of those devoted to Dhamma and for the removal of their troubles. They are busy in promoting the welfare of prisoners should they have behaved irresponsibly, releasing those that have children, are afflicted, or are aged. They are busy everywhere, here [at Pataliputra] and in all the women’s residences, whether my own, those of my brothers and sisters, or those of other relatives. Everywhere throughout my empire the officers of Dhamma are busy in everything relating to Dhamma, in the establishment of Dhamma and in the administration of charities among those devoted to Dhamma. For this purpose has this inscription of Dhamma been engraved. May it endure long and may my descendants conform to it. (Asoka and the decline of the Mauryas - Romila Thapar)

Thus says King Priyadarsi, the Beloved of the Gods: It is difficult to perform good (deeds); one who performs it for the first time, does a difficult job. Many good deeds have been done by me. If my sons, grandsons and their successors after them will perform such (good) deeds till the end of Samwarta kalpa they will perform meritorious deeds. But he who will be reluctant to it will be a sinner. It is easy to commit a sin.

For a long time past, Dharma-mahamatras were never appointed previously. But now the Dharma-mahamatras have been appointed by me when I had been consecrated thirteen years. They have been deputed among all sects for the establishment and promotion of Dharma and for the happiness and welfare of those devoted to Dharma. They are appointed among the Yavanas, Kambojas, Rastrikas, Pitinikas and other on the western border; among the brahamanas, householders, soldiers and their chiefs; among the poor and the aged for their welfare and happiness; and also for freedom from oppression of those who are devoted to Dharma. They are also intended for the release of those who are prisoners, for freedom against oppression and for giving (money) grants, on the basic that one has many children or is pressed by misfortune of affected by age. They are employed at every place, i.e. in my harems, among my brothers, sisters and other relations in Pataliputra and neighboring towns. These Dharma-mahamatras are appointed among all those (who) are devoted to Dharma at all places within my Empire, whether one is desirous of Dharma or devoted to Dharma or devoted to alms giving and (donation).

With this intention has this religious edict been caused to be inscribed that it may be permanent and that my descendants may follow my foot steps. (Inscriptions of Asoka - N. P. Rastogi)

1. King Devānaṃppiya Piyadassi speaks thus:

It is difficult to perform a meritorious act. He who first starts performing merit, finds it very difficult to perform.

2. Now, I have performed many meritorious deeds. Therefore my sons, grandsons, and descendants will honour and follow (the acts) which I have performed, till the end of (dissolution of) aeon.

3. They will perform similar good deeds. But the one who neglects it even a little, he shall perform evil deed. It is easier to commit sin.

4. In times past, formerly there were no Dhamma Mahāmattās. In the thirteenth year of my coronation I have appointed them. They are occupied (with the work of) establishing Dhamma amongst all heretics.

5. Dhamma-Āyuttas cover Yoṇa, Kaṃboja, Gandhāra, Raṭhika, Petenika and other on the borderland who have faith in me.

6. … for the happiness Dhamma-Āyuttas are occupied, unihindered, relieve those who are impressed by advocating statements for them.

7. They are made for people and taking possession of them, they look after old ones and subjects … They are occupied in Paṭakiputta and outside and …

8. … those or other relatives are occupied for all this is the determination of Dhamma.

9. … which these Dhamma Mahāmattās (perform); for this purpose this scripture thas been written. (Edicts of King Aśoka: A New Vision – Meena Talim)