အေသာကရဲ႕ အကၡရာမ်ား-၅ (အပိုင္း-၂)

ေက်ာက္စာေရာ ဘာသာျပန္ေတြေရာဆိုေတာ့ အေတာ္ မ်ားေနတယ္။ ဘာသာျပန္ကလဲ တစ္ခုဆို လံုေလာက္ၿပီလို႔ ထင္တာပဲ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ႏႈိင္းယွဥ္ၿပီး ဖတ္လို႔ရေအာင္ စုစုစည္းစည္းနဲ႔ လုပ္လိုက္တာ။ ဘာသာျပန္ၾကတဲ့ အခ်ိန္ေတြက မတူဘူးေလ။ ဘာသာျပန္သူေတြရဲ႕ အျမင္ေလးေတြလဲ ကြဲမွာပဲ။ တေန႔ကမွ အေသာကနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္တဲ့ စာအုပ္ ၂အုပ္ထပ္ရလို႔ ဘာသာျပန္ ၂မ်ိဳး ထပ္တိုးထားတယ္။ တစ္ခ်ိဳ႕ေက်ာက္စာေတြက အေတာ္ ႐ွည္တယ္။ အပိုင္း ၂ပိုင္းခြဲမွ အဆင္ေျပမယ္။

ေဒ၀ါနံပိယ ပိယဒသီမင္း မိန္႔ၾကား၏။ ေကာင္းမႈကို ျပဳႏိုင္ခဲ၏။ ေကာင္းမႈ ျပဳသူသည္ ျပဳႏိုင္ခဲေသာအမႈကို ျပဳသည္မည္၏။ ငါသည္ ေကာင္းမႈမ်ားစြာ ျပဳခဲ့၏။ ထို႔အတူ ငါ၏သား, ေျမးတို႔ႏွင့္ ယင္းတုိ႔၏ အဆက္အႏြယ္တို႔သည္ ကမၻာပတ္လံုး ငါ၏နည္းတူ လိုက္နာျပဳလုပ္ၾကပါေသာ္ ေကာင္းမႈျပဳသည္မည္လိမ့္မည္။ ငါ၏ စကား အနည္းအပါးမွ်ပင္ ဖ်က္ဆီးသူသည္ မေကာင္းမႈျပဳသည္ မည္လိမ့္မည္။ မေကာင္းမႈကိုကား ျပဳလြယ္ၾက၏။
ေ႐ွးအခါကမူ ဓမၼမဟာမတၱေခၚ တရားေရးအမတ္ မ႐ွိခဲ့ဘူး။ ငါ အဘိသိက္ခံ၍ ၁၃-ႏွစ္ေျမာက္၌ ဓမၼမဟာမတၱကို ခန္႔ထား၏။ ယင္းအမတ္ႀကီးတို႔သည္ ဂိုဏ္းဂဏအားလံုးတို႔၌ တရားတည္ေစရန္, တရားတိုးပြားေစရန္, တရားက်င့္ေဆာင္ၾကေစရန္ႏွင့္ ေယာန, ကေမၺာဇ, ဂႏၶာရ, ရ႒ိက, ပိထိနိကတိုင္းမ်ားႏွင့္ တပါးေသာ အပရႏၲတိုင္းတို႔၏ စီးပြားခ်မ္းသာျဖစ္ေစရန္ ေဆာင္႐ြက္လ်က္႐ွိၾက၏။
ထိုအမတ္တို႔သည္ သူခစား, အ႐ွင္သခင္, ပုဏၰား, သူေဌး, အားကိုးရာမဲ့သူ, အိုမင္းမစြမ္းသူတို႔၏ စီးပြားခ်မ္းသာႏွင့္ တရားက်င့္သူတို႔ ေဘးမေရာက္ေစရန္ ကာကြယ္ေစာင့္ေ႐ွာက္လ်က္႐ွိၾက၏။
ထိုအမတ္တို႔သည္ သားသမီး အၿခံအရံမ်ားသူ, မင္းမႈထမ္းခဲ့ဘူးသူ,အိုမင္းမစြမ္းသူတို႔ ခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္ကြပ္မ်က္ျခင္းမွ လြတ္ကင္း၍ အေႏွာက္အယွက္မ႐ွိ လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းသာခြင့္ ရၾကေစရန္ ေဆာင္႐ြက္လ်က္႐ွိၾက၏။
ထိုအမတ္တို႔သည္ ဤျပည္၌၎, အျပင္အပၿမိဳ႕မ်ား၌၎, ငါ၏ နန္းတြင္း၌၎, ငါ၏ ညီ, အကို, အမ,ႏွမတို႔ အိမ္တြင္း၌၎, အျခားေဆြမ်ိဳးမ်ားႏွင့္ အရပ္ေဒသအားလံုးတို႔၌၎ ေဆာင္႐ြက္လ်က္႐ွိၾက၏။
ငါ၏ ႏိုင္ငံအ၀ွန္း၌ တရားကို အမွီျပဳရန္, တရားကို ေဆာက္တည္ရန္, အလွဴဒါနႏွင့္ ယွဥ္ေစရန္ ထိုမဟာမတၱတို႔ကို ခန္႔ထားျခင္း ျဖစ္၏။ ဤတရားစာသည္ အဓြန္႔႐ွည္စြာ တည္ပါေစသတည္း။ ငါ၏ ျပည္သူတို႔ အစဥ္ လုိက္နာၾကကုန္ေလာ့။
(သိရီဓမၼာေသာကမင္းတရားႀကီး၏ ကိုးတိုင္းကိုးဌာန ဗုဒၶဓမၼႏိုင္ငံေတာ္-ဦးေသာ္ဇင္)

Thus, saith His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King: The good deed is difficult of performance. He who is the first performer of a good deed achieves something difficult of performance. Now by me many a good deed has been achieved.
Therefore should my sons, grandsons, and my descendants after them up to the end of time follow in my footsteps, they will do really meritorious deeds. But he who in this matter will cause even a portion to diminish will perform an evil deed indeed. Sin must be trodden down.
Now in times past the Dharma-Mahamatras were non-existent previously. But now the Dharma-Mahamatras have been created by me consecrated for thirteen years. They have been employed among all sects for the establishment and growth of Dharma and for the good happiness of those devoted to religion (even) among the Yonas, Kambojas, Gandharas, Rastrikas, Pitinikas and whatever other people of Aparanta or western borderers (of mine there are). They are also employed among the soldiers and their chiefs, Brahmanical ascetics and householders, the destitute, and the infirm by age, for the good and happiness, and freedom from molestation, of those who have applied themselves to Dharma. They are also employed for taking steps against imprisonment, for freedom from molestation, and for granting release, on the ground that one has numerous offspring or is overwhelmed by misfortune or afflicted by age. Here, and in all the outlying towns, in all the harems of my brothers and sisters and whatever other relatives (of mine there are), everywhere are they employed. These Dharma-Mahamatras are employed among those devoted to Dharma in all places within my dominions, whatever one is eager for Dharma or established, in Dharma or properly devoted to charity.
For this purpose has this religious edict been inscribed that it may be everlasting and that my descendants may follow in this path.
(Asoka-R.K. Mookerji)

Thus speaks the Beloved of the Gods, the king of Piyadassi: It is hard to do good and he who does good, does a difficult thing. And I have done much good. And my sons, my grandsons and my descendents after them until the end of the world if they will follow my example, they too will do good. But he who neglects my reforms even in part will do wrong, for sin is easy to commit.
In the past there were no officers of Dhamma. It was I who first appointed them, when I had been consecrated for thirteen years. They are busy in all sects, establishing Dhamma, increasing the interest in Dhamma, and attending to the welfare and happiness of those who are devoted to Dhamma, among the Greeks, the Kambojas, the Gandharas, the Risthikas, the Pitinikas, and the other people of the west. Among servants and nobles, brahmans and wealthy householders, among the poor and the aged, they [the officers of Dhamma], are working for the welfare and happiness of those devoted to Dhamma and for the removal of their troubles. They are busy in promoting the welfare of prisoners should they have behaved irresponsibly, releasing those that have children, are afflicted, or are aged. They are busy everywhere, here [at Pataliputra] and in all the women’s residences, whether my own, those of my brothers and sisters, or those of other relatives. Everywhere throughout my empire the officers of Dhamma are busy in everything relating to Dhamma, in the establishment of Dhamma and in the administration of charities among those devoted to Dhamma. For this purpose has this inscription of Dhamma been engraved. May it endure long and may my descendants conform to it.
(Asoka and the decline of the Mauryas- Romila Thapar)

Thus says King Priyadarsi, the Beloved of the Gods: It is difficult to perform good (deeds); one who performs it for the first time, does a difficult job. Many good deeds have been done by me. If my sons, grandsons and their successors after them will perform such (good) deeds till the end of Samwarta kalpa they will perform meritorious deeds. But he who will be reluctant to it will be a sinner. It is easy to commit a sin.
For a long time past, Dharma-mahamatras were never appointed previously. But now the Dharma-mahamatras have been appointed by me when I had been consecrated thirteen years. They have been deputed among all sects for the establishment and promotion of Dharma and for the happiness and welfare of those devoted to Dharma. They are appointed among the Yavanas, Kambojas, Rastrikas, Pitinikas and other on the western border; among the brahamanas, householders, soldiers and their chiefs; among the poor and the aged for their welfare and happiness; and also for freedom from oppression of those who are devoted to Dharma. They are also intended for the release of those who are prisoners, for freedom against oppression and for giving (money) grants, on the basic that one has many children or is pressed by misfortune of affected by age. They are employed at every place, i.e. in my harems, among my brothers, sisters and other relations in Pataliputra and neighboring towns. These Dharma-mahamatras are appointed among all those (who) are devoted to Dharma at all places within my Empire, whether one is desirous of Dharma or devoted to Dharma or devoted to alms giving and (donation).
With this intention has this religious edict been caused to be inscribed that it may be permanent and that my descendants may follow my foot steps.
(Inscriptions of Asoka- N. P. Rastogi)