21 08 11

This is in continuation of my previous mail. The question of break with the past is quite a discussed issue. One need not read Asoka’s mind but see the effect in the centuries after and before Christ, just as one need not read the mind of Pericles or Zarathustra to see the change in Greece or Persia after them that had made Rhys Davids to pass his comments on the first effects of the Iron Age in the ancient world. Since other works will not be available to the correspondent , R.C. Hazra’s Studies in the Puranic Records of Hindu rites and customs 207-210 along with the chapters in the CHI  (I:221) referred to therein  are advised for consultation on the post-Asokan break in customs and relevant matter.

Best

DB

From: Dipak Bhattacharya <dbhattacharya200498@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: [INDOLOGY] Fw: Re: [INDOLOGY] Fwd: [INDOLOGY] taxonomy question
To: INDOLOGY@liverpool.ac.uk
Date: Sunday, 21 August, 2011, 10:47 AM

--- On Sun, 21/8/11, Dipak Bhattacharya <dbhattacharya200498@yahoo.com> wrote: From: Dipak Bhattacharya <dbhattacharya200498@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Fwd: [INDOLOGY] taxonomy question To: "Artur Karp" <karp@uw.edu.pl> Date: Sunday, 21 August, 2011, 10:45 AM Intensive study of the inscriptions is the main instrument. That can be misused: V.Smith, for example, saw nothing beyond feeling of unity with animals, a view indirectly reiterated by Keith,  as if Asoka did not feel for man. D. D. Kosambi (junior) will help those who want to find the 'break'. The abolition of apavaahana is something mentioned by the emperor himself that was bound to result in loss of revenue and the enterpreneurship of the state. I need not state them here. After Kosambi and Romila Thapar it is not necessary to speculate on the break, nor difficult to do away with the previous garbage. The present correspondent's study is in Bengali , hence will not help Best DB --- On Sun, 21/8/11, Artur Karp <karp@uw.edu.pl> wrote: From: Artur Karp <karp@uw.edu.pl> Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Fwd: [INDOLOGY] taxonomy question To: "Dipak Bhattacharya" <dbhattacharya200498@yahoo.com> Cc: INDOLOGY@liverpool.ac.uk Date: Sunday, 21 August, 2011, 7:36 AM 2011/8/21 Dipak Bhattacharya <dbhattacharya200498@yahoo.com> Asoka was a reformer breaking with the past. As a reformer AND a politician - how far would Aśoka go with his project of  breaking with the past? To even try to answer this we would first need to know what was his idea about what constituted the past.  Artur K.