အေသာကရဲ႕ အကၡရာမ်ား-၁၃ (အပိုင္း-၃)

တ’ေမ၀ စ ၀ိဇယံ မနတု, ေယ ဓံမ-၀ိဇေယာ၊
တရားႏွင့္ ေအာင္ႏိုင္ျခင္းကိုသာ ေအာင္ႏိုင္ျခင္းလို႔ မွတ္ယူသင့္တယ္။

ေဒ၀ါနံပိယ ပိယဒသီမင္းသည္ အဘိသိက္ခံ၍ ၈ႏွစ္ေျမာက္၌ ကလိဂၤတိုင္းကို ေအာင္ျမင္၏။ ထိုအခါ ထိုတိုင္းျပည္၌ လူေပါင္း တသိန္း ငါးေသာင္း အခ်ဳပ္အေႏွာင္ခံရ၏။ တသိန္းမွ် သတ္ျဖတ္ျခင္းခံရ၍ ထို႔ထက္မ်ားျပားေသာ လူတို႔ ေသေၾကပ်က္စီးၾက၏။
ကလိဂၤျပည္၌ ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္း၏ တရားက်င့္ေဆာင္ျခင္း, ေစာင့္ေ႐ွာက္ျခင္း လိုလားျခင္းႏွင့္ တရားၾသ၀ါဒ အႏွ႔႔ံအျပား ထြန္းကားလာ၏။ သို႔ေသာ္လည္း ယခုအခါ ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္းအား ေနာင္တရေန၏။ လူအမ်ားကို သတ္ျဖတ္ျခင္း ဖမ္းဆီးျခင္းတို႔ျဖင့္ ေအာင္ျခင္းသည္ မွားေသာ ေအာင္ျခင္းဟု ယူဆ၏။ ယင္းသို႔ေသာ ေအာင္ျခင္းကို ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္းသည္ ၀မ္းနည္းေၾကကြဲ ၀န္ေလး၏။
တိုင္းျပည္ဟူသမွ်၌ ရဟန္းပုဏၰား, ဂိုဏ္းဂဏ, အိမ္ေထာင္႐ွင္မ်ား ႐ွိၾက၏။ ထိုတြင္ အမိအဖ ဆရာသမားတို႔အား ကိုးကြယ္ဆည္းကပ္ျခင္း, အေဆြခင္ပြန္း, အသိမိတ္ေဆြ, ေဆြမ်ိဳးဉာတကာ, ေက်းကၽြန္သူခစားတို႔၌ ေကာင္းေသာ က်င့္၀တ္ႏွင့္ လံုၿခံဳစြာ ေစာင့္ေ႐ွာက္ျခင္းသည္သာ ေ႐ွးဦးစြာ ေဆာင္႐ြက္သင့္ေသာ ၀တၱရားျဖစ္၏။ သို႔ေသာ္လည္း ထိုတိုင္းျပည္၌ ေနသူတို႔သည္ သတ္ျဖတ္ျခင္း, ညႇင္းဆဲျခင္း, ဖ်က္ဆီးျခင္း ခံၾကရ၍ ေအးခ်မ္းစြာ ေနလိုသူတို႔လည္း ျပည္႐ြာကို စြန္႔ခြါသြားၾကရ၏။ သူတို႔ ခ်စ္ျမတ္ႏိုးေသာ အေဆြခင္ပြန္း, အသိအကၽြမ္း, ေဆြမ်ိဳးဉာတကာတို႔လည္း ပင္ပန္းဆင္းရဲျခင္းသို႔ ေရာက္ၾကရ၏။ သူတို႔အားလံုးကိုလည္း ဖ်က္ဆီးရာေရာက္၍ ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္းသည္ လြန္စြာ၀န္ေလးသည္ဟု ယူဆ၏။
ေလာက၌ ဂိုဏ္းဂဏမ႐ွိေသာ, ရဟန္းပုဏၰားမ႐ွိေသာ, လူတို႔ အညီအၫြတ္ဖြဲ႕စည္းထားေသာ အဖြဲ႕အစည္း၌ ၾကည္ညိဳသူမ႐ွိေသာ တိုင္းျပည္ဟူ၍ မ႐ွိ။ ကလိဂၤတိုင္းကို ေအာင္ေသာအခါ အသတ္ခံရ, ေသေၾကပ်က္စီးရ, အေႏွာင္အဖြဲ႕ခံရေသာ လူတို႔၏ အပံုတရာ, အပံုတေထာင္ပံု၍ တပံုမွ်ပင္ ပ်က္စီးေစကာမူ ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္းသည္ အလြန္၀န္ေလးသည္ဟု ယူဆလိမ့္မည္။ ပ်က္စီးေအာင္ ျပဳလုပ္သူကိုပင္ ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္းသည္ သည္းခံသင့္သည္ဟု ယူဆ၍ သည္းခံႏိုင္စြမ္း၏။
ေဒ၀ါနံ ပိယမင္းသည္ ႏိုင္ငံအတြင္း႐ွိ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမားတို႔ကိုလည္း ယဥ္ေက်းေစ၏။ တရား၌ သက္၀င္ေစ၏။ ယင္းသို႔ မေဆာင္႐ြက္ရလွ်င္ ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္းအား ခ်မ္းသာမရ၊ ေနာင္တရေနလိမ့္မည္။ ထိုသူတို႔အားလည္း “သင္တုိ႔သည္ မေကာင္းမႈမွ ႐ွက္ေၾကာင္ၾကေလာ့ မပ်က္စီးၾကေစလင့္”ဟု မွာၾကား၏။ ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္းသည္ သတၱ၀ါတို႔ မပ်က္စီးျခင္း ေစာင့္စည္းျခင္း တရားက်င့္ျခင္းႏွင့္ ႐ႊင္လန္း၀မ္းသာျခင္းတို႔ကို အလို႐ွိ၏။
ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္းသည္ တရားေအာင္ျခင္းကို မုခ်ေအာင္ျခင္းဟု ယံုၾကည္၏။ ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္း၏ တရားေအာင္ျခင္းကို ဤႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ နယ္စြန္နယ္ဖ်ား အားလံုးတို႔၌၎, ယူဇနာ ႐ွစ္ရာေ၀းကြာေသာ အႏၲိေယာဂမည္ေသာ ေယာနမင္းႏိုင္ငံ၌၎, ထိုႏိုင္ငံ၏ တဖက္မွ တုလမယ, အႏၲိကိန, မက, အလိသုဒရဟူေသာ မင္းေလးပါးတို႔ ႏိုင္ငံ၌၎ ထုိမွတပါး ေအာက္ပိုင္း႐ွိ ေစာဠ, ပ႑ယ, တမၺပဏၰိတို္င္းတို႔၌၎ ရ႐ွိခဲ့၏။ ထိုမွတပါး ၀ိသ, ၀ဇီ, ေယာန, ကေမၺာဇ, နာဘက, နာဘပႏၲိ, ေဘာဇန, ပတိိနိကၠ, အဓ, ပလဒျပည္တို႔၌လည္း ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္း၏ တရားဓမၼၾသ၀ါဒကို လိုက္နာၾက၏။ ေဒ၀ါနံပိယတမန္ မေရာက္ေသာတိုင္းျပည္တို႔၌လည္း ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္း၏ ဓမၼတရားၾသ၀ါဒကို ၾကားရ၍ တရားကို အစဥ္ လိုက္နာၾက၏။ ေနာက္လည္း ဆက္လက္ လုိက္နာၾကလိမ့္မည္။
ယင္းသို႔ တရားေအာင္ျခင္း ျဖစ္ေပၚလာေသာ ႏွစ္သက္ျခင္းသည္ နက္႐ႈိင္းေသာ္လည္း ေပါ့၏။ ေဒ၀ါနံပိယမင္းသည္ တမလြန္ေလာကႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္းေသာ အက်ိဳးကိုသာ ႀကီးျမတ္သည္ဟု ယူဆ၏။ ဤအတြက္ ဤတရားစာကို ေရးေစျခင္းျဖစ္၏။ ငါ၏ သား, ေျမးတို႔သည္ အသစ္ျဖစ္ေသာ ေအာင္ျခင္းကို ေအာင္သင့္သည္ဟု မယူဆသင့္။ ျမႇားျဖင့္ ေအာင္ျခင္းအစား သည္းခံျခင္းႏွင့္ ေပါ့ပါးေသာ ဒဏ္ကို ႏွစ္သက္ၾကရမည္။ တရားေအာင္ျခင္းကိုသာ ေအာင္ျခင္းဟု ယူဆၾကရမည္။ ယင္းသည္သာ ဤေလာက, ေနာက္ေလာက အတြက္ျဖစ္၏။ အလံုးစံု ခ်မ္းသာေၾကာင္းျဖစ္ေသာ ႀကိဳးစားအားထုတ္၍ရေသာ ခ်မ္းသာကိုသာ ဤေလာက, ေနာက္ေလာက၌ ႀကီးက်ယ္ျမင့္ျမတ္၏။
(သိရီဓမၼာေသာကမင္းတရားႀကီး၏ ကိုးတိုင္းကိုးဌာန ဗုဒၶဓမၼႏိုင္ငံေတာ္-ဦးေသာ္ဇင္)

When he had been consecrated eight years the Beloved of the Gods, the king Piyadassi, conquered Kalinga. A hundred and fifty thousand people were deported, a hundred thousand were killed and many times that number perished. Afterwards, now that Kalinga was annexed, the Beloved of the Gods very earnestly practiced Dhamma, desired Dhamma, and taught Dhamma. On conquering Kalinga the Beloved of the Gods felt remorse, for, when an independent country is conquered the slaughter, death, and deportation of the people is extremely grievous to the Beloved of the Gods, and weights heavily on his mind. What is even more deplorable to the Beloved of the Gods, is that those who dwell there, whether brahmans, sramanas, or those of other sects, or householders who show obedience to their superiors, obedience to mother and father, obedience to their teachers and behave well and devotedly towards their friends, acquaintances, colleagues, relatives, slaves, and servants—all suffer violence, murder, and separation from their loved ones. Even those who are fortunate to have escaped, and whose love is undiminished (by the brutalizing effect of war), suffer from the misfortunes of their friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and relatives. This participation of all men in suffering, weights heavily on the mind of the Beloved of the Gods. Except among the Greeks, there is no land where the religious orders of brahmanas and sramanas are not to be found, and there is no land anywhere where men do not support one sect or another. Today if a hundredth or a thousandth part of those people who were killed or died or were deported when Kalinga was annexed were to suffer similarly, it would weigh heavily on the mind of the Beloved of the Gods.
the Beloved of the Gods believes that one who does wrong should be forgiven as far as it is possible to forgive him. And the Beloved of the Gods conciliates the forest tribes of his empire, but he warns them that he has power even in his remorse, and he asks them to repent, lest they be killed. For the Beloved of the Gods wishes that all beings should be unharmed, self-controlled, calm in mind, and gentle.
The Beloved of the Gods considers victory by Dhamma to be the foremost victory. And moreover the Beloved of the Gods has gained this victory on all his frontiers to a distance of six hundred yojanas (i.e. about 1500 miles), where regains the Greek king named Antiochus, and beyond the realm of that Antiochus in the land of the four kings named Ptolemy, Antigonus, Magas, and Alexander; and in the south over the Colas and Pandyas as far as Ceylon. Likewise here in the imperial territories among the Greeks and Kambojas, Nabhakas and Nabhapanktis, Bhojas and Pitinikas, Andhras and Parindas, everywhere the people follow the Beloved of the Gods’ instructions in Dhamma. Even where the envoys of the Beloved of the Gods have not gone, people hear of his conduct according to Dhamma, his precepts and his instruction in Dhamma, and they follow Dhamma and will continue to follow it.
What is obtained by this is victory everywhere, and everywhere victory is pleasant. This pleasure has been obtained through victory by Dhamma—yet it is but a slight pleasure, for the Beloved of the Gods only looks upon that as important in its results which pertains to the next world.
This inscription of Dhamma has been engraved so that any sons or great grandsons that I may have should not think of gaining new conquest, and in whatever victories they may gain should be satisfied with patience and light punishment. They should only consider conquest by Dhamma to be a true conquest, and delight in Dhamma should be their whole delight, for this is value in both this world and the next.
(Asoka and the decline of the Mauryas- Romila Thapar)

The state of Kalinga was conquered when King Pryiadarsi, the Beloved of the Gods, was consecrated eight years. One hundred and fifty thousand were carried off (as prisoner), one hundred thousand were slain, and many times as many those who were dead. Thereafter, when the state of Kalinga has been conquered, practice of Dharma, love of Dharma and elevation of that Dharma were introduced by the Beloved of the Gods. After having conquered Kalinga, the Beloved of the Gods suffered from repentance. For, when an unconquered country is conquered, it envolves bloodshed, death and imprisonment of the people and such happening are regarded as intensively painful and regrettable by the Beloved of the Gods. But this is even more serious, because there live Brahmanas, Sramanas followers of other religions and householders amog whom are established respect to elders, to parents and preceptors, proper treatment towards friends, companions, supporters and relatives, servants and dependents and sincerity of devotion, whom befalls violence, death or banishment from the dear ones. Or there are those who are well established and possess intense affection, but their friends, acquaintances, companions and relatives meet with a misery; them that (misery) become a personal violence to those (former). This (ill) luck of all men alike is felt serious by the Beloved of the Gods. And there is no state except that of the Yavanas where do not exist these religious orders, namely, the Brahamanas, and the Sramanas; and there is no place in any state where people have no faith in one sect or another. Therefore, even one hundredth or one thousandth of those who were slain, died, or were made prisoners in the state of Kalinga, is now considered serious by the Beloved of the Gods. Nay, if any one does wrong (to him), he is pardoned till the tolerable extend. Even those forest tribesmen who have come under the dominion of the Beloved of the Gods, he thinks to mould them to his way of life and thinking. Though the Beloved of the Gods repents over it, yet tells them of his might, why? so that they may confer a sense of remorse, and not be massacred. The Beloved of the Gods wishes for all living beings non-violence, self-control, equal treatment and gentleness. Conquest through the Dharmavijaya is regarded supreme by the Beloved of the Gods in his empire and the neighboring kingdoms, even as far as six hundred Yojanas, where lives king Amtiyoka, and in the neighborhood of this king Amtiyoka, the four kings namely Turamaya, Antekida, Maga and Alikasundara, (similarly) downwards, where exist the Colas, the Pandyas, as far as the Tamraparni river,-- similarly in the king’s (own) empire among the Yona and the Kambojas, the Nabhakas and the Nabhapanktis, the hereditary Bhoja rulers, Andhras and Pulinda—everywhere they follow the instructions of the Beloved of the Gods, do not go, they, listening to the doctrine of Dharma, the ordinances, and the instruction in Dharma by the Beloved of the Gods, render obedience to Dharma, and will so continue. And the victory which is thereby gained, everywhere becomes a victory enamored in love. The love has been gained (by me) in the victory through Dharma. That love, however, is a small thing. That which is connected with the other world is considered by the Beloved of the Gods as productive of important consequences. And this religious edict has been inscribed for this purpose, why?—in order that, my sons, and great grandsons, may never imagine of a new victory as worth with forgiveness and lightness of punishment. And they should regard that to be the (real) victory which is gained through Dharma. That (conquest) is good for this world and the next. May their joy be the joy through exertion. That is good for this and the other world.
(Inscriptions of Asoka- N. P. Rastogi)