Free India Discovered by John Keay Page B

one, again experienced that shiver down the spine. Bar two extra paragraphs on the Orissa inscription, the two were identical. Ashoka was proclaiming his edicts from one corner of India to the other, across an empire far greater than that of British India andcomparable only to that of the Moghuls. But still more surprising was a claim made in one of the edicts. If Prinsep’s reading was right, Ashoka had set up hospitals for men and animals throughout his kingdom, including the extreme south of the peninsula ‘and moreover within the dominions of Antiochus the Greek’. He also claimed that the gospel of non-violence and respect for all living creatureswas being acknowledged even ‘by the kings of Egypt, Ptolemy and Antigonus and Magas’.
    This said a great deal for Ashoka’s international standing. But, more important, here at last was another point of contact – the first since Jones’s identification of Sandracottus – between India’s ancient history and that of the West. As Prinsep leafed through the classics to discover which Ptolemy and whichAntiochus these might be, he sent an urgent message to Kittoe who was still in Orissa. Would the coal prospector quickly go to Dhauli and recheck the edicts in which these names appeared? Kittoe reacted at once.
On my arrival at Cuttack I received a letter from my friend the Secretary of the Asiatic Society, informing me of his discovery of the name of Antiochus in the Girnar and Dhauli inscriptions, and requesting me to recompare my transcript and correct any errors. I instantly laid my dak [organized transport] and left at 6 p.m. for Dhauli, which curious place I reached before daybreak and had to wait till it was light; for the two bear cubs which escaped me there last year, when I killed the old bear, were now full grown and disputing the ground. At daybreak I climbed to the Aswastuma [the rock] and cutting two large forked boughs of a tree near the spot, placed them against the rock; on these I stood to effect my object. I had taken the precaution to make a bearer hold the wood steady, but being intent on my interesting task I forgot my ticklish footing; the bearer had also fallen asleep and let go his hold, so that having overbalanced myself the wood slipped and I was pitched head foremost down the rock, but fortunately fell on my hands and received no injury beyond a few bruises and a severe shock; I took a little rest and then completed the job.
    Simultaneously Prinsep tried to get the Girnar inscription rechecked. The vital edict containing the mention of Ptolemy was badly damaged with many of the letters missing altogether. Tentatively he approached the government,an unthinkable idea only a few months previously. But by now the excitement caused by his revelations was considerable. The government agreed to help and, within a couple of weeks, a Lieutenant Postans was on his way to Girnar.
    Mrs Postans went too, anxious like everyone else to be in on the elucidation of what she called ‘this black and time-stained rock’. Funded by the government, the operationwas conducted with unheard-of thoroughness. The great rock was swathed in sturdy ladders and scaffolding; an awning was erected overhead to shade the workers from the sun; the whole inscription was then divided into numbered sections, and for three weeks Postans and his men crawled about on its vast surface taking impression after impression.
As my first plan, the letters were carefully filled with a red pigment (vermilion and oil), every attention being paid to the inflexions and other minute though important points. A thin and perfectly transparent cloth was then tightly glued over the whole of one division, and the letters as seen plainly through the cloth, traced upon it in black; in this way all the edicts were transcribed and the cloth being removed, the copy was carefully revised letter by letter with the original. The very smooth and convex surface of the rock on this side was highly favourable to