16 Rajendralala Mitra — On the Barly Life of AsoJca. [Ja^. 



with the religion o£ the Brahmans. But it set itself in antagonism to 

 Hinduism, the old faith of the country, hy denouncing the Vedas as 

 false, and the sacrifices enjoined in them as mischievous and sinful. A 

 hypertrophy of the feeling of mercy for animated creatures, forms its cardi- 

 nal point. It might be that originally this feeling was not carried 

 to the absurd extent which resulted, to quote the vivid language of Mr. 

 Thomas, in " devices of Hospitals for the suffering members of the brute 

 creation, and ultimately, in after times, progressing into the absurdity 

 of the wearing of respirators and the perpetual waving of fans, to 

 avoid the destruction of minute insect life. An infatuation, which 

 eventually led to the surrendering of thrones and kingdoms, to avoid 

 a chance step which should crush a worm, or anything that crej^t upon 

 the face of the earth ; and more detrimental still, a regal interference with 

 the every- day life of the people at large, and the subjecting of human 

 labour to an enforced three months' cessation in the year, in order that 

 a moth should not approach a lighted lamp, and the revolving wheel 

 should not crush a living atom in the mill."* But it is impossible to con- 

 ceive a form of Jainism which tolerated the daily sacrifice of hundreds of 

 thousands of animals for meat food or religious worship. From its very 

 conception Jainism, like Buddhism, was a protest against the sacrifices of 

 the Yedas. At a time when the Vedic ordinances enjoined hecatombs of 

 cattle as the means of salvation, and the cruel practice of driving wooden 

 spikes into the hearts of the victims as the orthodox mode of slaughter, 

 such a protest was not only needed, but could not but most effectually 

 appeal to the feeling of the public, and ally it on its behalf. This protest 

 apart, there would be no raison d'etre for Jainism ; and to suppose there- 

 fore that Asoka, as a Jain, could, for purposes oi puja and food, daily 

 sacrifice hundreds of thousands of animals, would be to assume a gross in- 

 consistency. As a Hindu, following the canons of the Kalpa Sutras, he could 

 do all that and more most appropriately ; and the presumption therefore 

 w^ould be strong, that he was a Hindu following the Hindu faith when 

 he indulged in those sacrifices, and became a Jain, or a Buddhist, when, in 

 the 10th or 12th year of his reign, he prohibited those sacrifices. This would 

 be a much more reasonable solution of the question, than the supjDOsition 

 that, notwithstanding his Jainism, he had, from the heedlessness of youth, 

 or the love of " cake and ale," indulged in transgressions of the rules of his 

 ancestral faith. 



Such a solution would, likewise, be in keeping with the accounts 



of the Pali annals of Ceylon, which in a case of this kind, was more 



reliable than deductions founded upon monograms and mystic symbols 



of doubtful significance, and of such extensive currency that their 



* Journal Eoy. As. Soc, IX, p. 189. 



