1920. ] Notes on some Edicts of Asoka. 333 
tioned along with them may justly be regarded to have performed 
cognate functions. Fourthly, the present Edict recalls the 
concluding portion of Kautilya’s chapter on the Royal Routine 
archs. Kautilya also had, in the chapter under consideration, 
deprecated inaccessibility on the part of the monarch with refer- 
ence to work done at the wpasthana or ‘ Sanctuary,’ observing 
that the king should attend in turn to work connected with gods, 
sacred places the aged, the infirm, etc., either according to the 
heaviness of each of the items or according to emergency. All 
urgent work (atyayikam karyam), Kautilya (atyayika-vasena) 
well as in phraseology, between these Kautilyan utterances 
and Agoka’s Rock Edict VI, we may reasonably infer that the 
urgent (acayika) work referred to in the Edict is of the same 
variety as the urgent (@tyayika) work of a sacred character, 
which Kautilya recommended to the immediate and earnest 
attention of his king. It follows that the mahamitras referred 
word in the present Edict is not dharmamahamatra but simply 
mahimatra would seem to controvert that distinction. But 
in P.E. VII Asoka, after telling us something about his 
dharmahamatras, says :-— 
pativisitham pativisitham tesu tesu te te mahamita. 
Clearly, therefore, the dharmamahamatras could be referred 
to simply as mahamatras if, in the context, they had 
received their fuller designation. Now R.E. V describes these 
at 
In R.E. VI, therefore, they could, without violence to the 
Agokan custom, be spoken of simply as mahamatras. It is 
| As was remarked by Prof. D. R. Bhandarkar in course of his Uni- 
versity lectures on Agoka’s Rock Edicts. 
