ေ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)
No comments:
Post a Comment