C. over the whole of India with the
exception of the Dekhan. This prince interested himself not only in
Buddhism, which he professed in his later years, but he took care, in a
fatherly way, as he repeatedly relates, of all other religious sects in
his vast kingdom. In the fourteenth year of his reign, he appointed
officials, called law-superintendents, whose duty it was to watch over the
life of the different communities, to settle their quarrels, to control
the distribution of their legacies and pious gifts. He says of them in the
second part of the seventh 'pillar' edict, which he issued in the
twenty-ninth year of his reign, "My superintendents are occupied with
various charitable matters, they are also engaged with all sects of
ascetics and householders; I have so arranged that they will also be
occupied with the affairs of the _Sa[.m]gha_; likewise I have
arranged that they will be occupied with the Ajivika Brahma[n.]s; I have
arranged it that they will also be occupied with the Niga[n.][t.]ha".
[Footnote: See Senart, _Inscriptions de Piyadasi_, tom. II, p. 82.
Ed. VIII, l. 4. My translation differs from Senart's in some points
especially in relation to the construction. Conf. _Epigraphia
Indiea_, vol. II, pp. 272f.] The word _Sa[.m]gha_ serves here as
usual for the Buddhist monks. The Ajivikas, whose name completely
disappears later, are often named in the sacred writings of the Buddhists
and the Jainas as an influential sect.
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