အေသာကရဲ႕ အကၡရာမ်ား-၁၆

ပိုစ့္မတင္ျဖစ္တာ တစ္လေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္။ ဘာမွေတာ့ မျဖစ္ပါဘူး။ လူတစ္ျခား စိတ္တျခား ျဖစ္ေနတာက လြဲလို႔ေပါ့။ အခုေတာ့ အကၡရာမ်ား ဆက္ပါအံုးမယ္ဗ်ာ။ ေက်ာက္စာဘာသာျပန္ အသစ္တစ္အုပ္ ထပ္ရထားလို႔ ဘာသာျပန္တစ္ခု တိုးထားတယ္။

ေဒ၀ါနံပိေယ ေဟ၀ံ အာဟ။ သမာပါယံ မဟာမတာ လဇ၀စနိက၀တ၀ိယာ။ အံ ကိဆိ ဒခါမိ ဟကံ၊ ကႎတိ၊ ကံ ကမန
ပဋိပါတေယတံ ဒု၀ါလေတ စ အာလေဘဟံ။ ဧသ စ ေမာခိယမတံ ဒု၀ါလ ဧတသ အထသ အံ တုေဖသု အႏုသတိ။ သ၀မုနိ-
သာ ေမ ပဇာ။ အထ ပဇာေယ ဣဆာမိ၊ ကႎတိ၊ ေမ သေ၀ဏာ ဟိတသုေခန ယုေဇယူ အထ ပဇာေယ ဣဆာမိ၊ ကႎတိ၊ ေမ သေ၀န ဟိတသု-
ေခန ယုေဇသု တိ ဟိဒေလာဂိကပါလေလာကိေကန။ ေဟ၀ံေမ၀ ေမ ဣဆ သ၀မုနိေသသု။ သိယာ အံတာနံ အ၀ိဇိတာ-
နံ ကႎ ဆံေဒ သု လာဇာ အေဖသူ တိ။ ဧတကာ ၀ါ ေမ ဣဆ အံေတသု၊ ပါပုေနယု၊ လာဇာ ေဟ၀ံ ဣဆတိ အႏု၀ိဂိန ေဟယု
မမိယာေယ အသြေသယု စ ေမ သုခံေမ၀ စ လေဟယူ မမ ေတ ေနာ(ဒု)ခံ။ ေဟ၀ံ စ ပါပုေနယု ခမိသတိ ေန လာဇာ
ဧ စကိေယ ခမိတေ၀။ မမံ နိမိတံ စ ဓံမစေလယူ တိ ဟိဒေလာဂံ စ ပရေလာဂံ စ အာလာဓေယယု။ ဧတာေယ
စ အဌာေယ ဟကံ တုေဖနိ အႏုသာသာမိ။ အနေန ဧတေကန ဟကံ၊ တုေဖနိ အႏုသာသိတု ဆံဒံ စ ေ၀ဒိ-
တု အာ မမ ဓိတိ ပတႎနာ စ အစလ။ သ ေဟ၀ံ ကဋဳ ကံေမ စလိတ၀ိေယ အသြာသနိယာ စ ေတ၊ ဧန ေတ ပါပုေန-
ယု အထာ ပိတ ေဟ၀ံ ေန လာဇာတိ၊ အထ အတာနံ အႏုကံပတိ၊ ေဟ၀ံ အေဖနိ အႏုကံပတိ၊ အထာ ပဇာ ေဟ-
၀ံ မေယ လာဇိေန။ တုေဖနိ ဟကံ အႏုသာသိတံု ဆံဒံ ေ၀ဒိတု အာ မမ ဓိတိ ပဋႎနာ စာ အစလ၊ သကလာ
ေဒသာယုတိေက ေဟာသာမီ ဧတသိ အထသိ။ အလံ ဟိ တုေဖ အသြာသနာေယ ဟိတသုခါေယ စ ေတသံ ဟိဒ-
ေလာဂိကပါလေလာကိကာေယ။ ေဟ၀ံ စ ကလံတံ သြဂံ စ အာလာဓယိသထ မမ စ အနေနယံ ဓသထ။
တာေယ စ အထာေယ ဣယံ လိပီ လိခိတာ ဟိဒ ဧန မဟာမတာ သသြတံ သမယံ ယုေဇယု အသြာသနာေယ စ
ဓံမစလနာေယ စ အံတာနံ။ ဣယံ စ လိပီ အႏုစာတံုမာသံ ေသာတ၀ိယာ တိေသန အံတလာ ပိ စ ေသာတ၀ိယာ။
ခေန သံတံ ဧေကန ပိ ေသာတ၀ိယ။ ေဟ၀ံ စ ကလံတံ စဃထ သံပဋိပါတယိတေ၀။

ေဒ၀ါနံပိယ မင္းႀကီးသည္ ဤသို႔ မိန္႔ေတာ္မူ၏။ သမာပါၿမိဳ႕႐ွိ အမတ္ႀကီးတို႔အား ေဒ၀ါနံပိယ မင္းႀကီး၏ စကားေတာ္ျဖင့္ ဤသို႔ မိန္႔ၾကားရာ၏။
တစံုတရာအား ငါျမင္၍ အလို႐ွိလွ်င္ ေဆာင္႐ြက္ဖြယ္ လုပ္ငန္းကို ငါစီစဥ္၍ နည္းလမ္းကို ငါ႐ွာႀကံၿပီးေသာ္ အေရးအႀကီးဆံုးဟု ငါထင္ေသာ နည္းလမ္းကို သင္တို႔အား ငါၫႊန္ၾကားခ်က္ျဖစ္ေစ၏။
ခပ္သိမ္းေသာ သူတို႔သည္ ငါ၏ သားသမီးမ်ား ျဖစ္ၾကကုန္၏။ ငါ၏ သားသမီးမ်ားအား ဤေလာကႏွင့္ တမႏြန္ေလာကတို႔၏ စီးပြားခ်မ္းသာအေပါင္းႏွင့္ ငါယွဥ္ေစလိုသည့္နည္းတူ ခပ္သိမ္းေသာ သူတို႔အားလည္း ငါယွဥ္ေစလို၏။
ငါမသိမ္းပိုက္ထားေသာ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ အစြန္အပ၌ ေနသူတို႔သည္ ငါတို႔၏ အေပၚ၌ မင္းႀကီးအသို႔ ဆႏၵထားေတာ္မူသနည္းဟု ေမးၾကကုန္အံ့။ ထိုႏိုင္ငံေတာ္အစြန္အပ၌ ေနသူတို႔အေပၚ၌ ငါ၏ ဆႏၵကား ဤသို႔တည္းဟု ျပန္ၾကားရာ၏။
“မင္းႀကီး အလို႐ွိေတာ္မူသည္မွာ သင္တို႔သည္ မင္းႀကီးအား မေၾကာက္မ႐ြံ႕ပဲ မင္းႀကီးသည္ ငါတို႔၏ ဆင္းရဲကို မေဆာင္၊ ခ်မ္းသာကိုသာ ေဆာင္အံ့ဟု မင္းႀကီးအေပၚ၌ ယံုၾကည္ရန္ျဖစ္၏။”
ဤသို႔လည္း ျပန္ၾကားရာေသး၏။
“မင္းႀကီးသည္ သင္တို႔အေပၚ၌ သည္းခံႏိုင္သေလာက္ သည္းခံအံ့။ သင္တို႔သည္ မင္းႀကီးအား ေထာက္ထားသျဖင့္ တရားကို က်င့္ၿပီးေသာ္ ဤေလာကႏွင့္ တမႏြန္ေလာကတို႔၏ စီးပြားခ်မ္းသာတို႔ကို ခံစားၾကကုန္ေလာ့။”
ဤအလို႔ငွာ သင္တို႔အား ငါၫႊန္ၾကားေပ၏။ ဤသို႔ သင္တို႔အား ၫႊန္ၾကားၿပီးေသာ္ ငါ၏ ဆႏၵေတာ္ႏွင့္ တကြ ငါ၏ အဓိဌာန္ ပဋိဉာဏ္တို႔၏ မယိမ္းမယိုင္ ခိုင္ၿမဲျခင္းကို သင္တို႔အား သိေစၿပီးသျဖင့္ ငါ၏ တာ၀န္ကား ေက်ေလၿပီ။
ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ အစြန္အပသားတို႔သည္ ႏွစ္သိမ့္ေရာင့္ရဲ၍ ငါ၏ အေပၚ၌ ယံုၾကည္ကိုးစားရန္ သင္တို႔ျပဳမူကာ အမႈကိစၥတို႔ကို ေဆာင္႐ြက္ကုန္ရာ၏။ မည္သို႔ ယံုၾကည္ကိုးစားေစရာ သနည္းဆိုေသာ္ မင္းႀကီးသည္ ငါတို႔၏ အဖသဖြယ္ျဖစ္၏။ မင္းႀကီးသည္ မိမိကိုကို ၾကင္နာသကဲ့သို႔ ငါတို႔အားလည္း ၾကင္နာ၏။ ငါတို႔သည္ မင္းႀကီး၏ သားသမီးမ်ားသဖြယ္သာ ျဖစ္ေခ်၏။
ဤသို႔လွ်င္ သင္တို႔အား ငါၫႊန္ၾကားပိ၏။ ငါ၏ ဆႏၵေတာ္ႏွင့္တကြ ငါ၏အဓိဌာန္ႏွင့္ ပဋိဉာဏ္တို႔၏ မယိမ္းမယိုင္ ခိုင္ၿမဲျခင္းကိုလည္း သိေစပိ၏။ ဤအလို႔ငွာ ေနရာတိုင္း၌ ေဒသဆိုင္ရာ အရာ႐ွိမ်ားကို ငါခန္႔ထားေတာ္မူမည္။ သင္တို႔သည္ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ အစြန္အပသားတို႔၏ ႏွစ္သိမ့္ေရာင့္ရဲမႈ ဤေလာက တမႏြန္ေလာကတို႔၏ စီးပြားခ်မ္းသာမႈတို႔ကို ေဆာင္႐ြက္ေပးစြမ္းႏိုင္၏။ ဤသို႔ေဆာင္႐ြက္ေသာ္ သင္တို႔သည္ နတ္ျပည္ ခ်မ္းသာကို ရ၍ ငါ၌ တင္႐ွိေသာ ၀တၱရားေႂကြးမွလည္း ကင္းၾကကုန္အံ့။
ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ အစြန္အပသားတို႔သည္ ႏွစ္သိမ့္ေရာင့္ရဲ၍ တရားကို က်င့္ေစျခင္းငွာ ငါ၏ အမတ္ႀကီးတို႔သည္ အခါခပ္သိမ္း အားထုတ္ၾကရန္ ဤကဗ်ည္းကို ေရးေစပိ၏။ ဤကဗ်ည္းအား ေလးလလွ်င္ တႀကိမ္ ၾကားနာရာ၏။ တိသ(ဖုသွ်) နကၡတ္ႏွင့္ ယွဥ္ေသာ ေန႔တို႔ႏွင့္ ၾကားေန႔တို႔၌လည္း အခါအခြင့္ရက တေယာက္တည္းျဖစ္ေစကာ ၾကားနာရာ၏။ ဤသို႔ ျပဳျခင္းျဖင့္ သင္တို႔သည္ ငါ၏ အမိန္႔ကို လိုက္နာေဆာင္႐ြက္ကုန္ရာသတည္း။
(အေသာကေက်ာက္စာမ်ား-ဦးဖိုးလတ္)

ေဒ၀ါနံပိယ မင္းသည္ ဤသို႔ မိန္႔ၾကား၏။ သမာပါၿမိဳ႕ အမတ္ႀကီးတို႔အား မင္း၏ စကားျဖင့္ ေျပာၾကားရမည္။ ငါေတြ႕ျမင္ေသာ အေၾကာင္းအရာတို႔ကို သင္တို႔အား သိေသလို၏။ အသို႔နည္း ငါသည္ ျပဳသင့္ေသာ အမႈကို နည္းလမ္း အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးျဖင့္ စတင္အားထုတ္မည္။ အက်ိဳးေက်းဇူး႐ွိေသာ နည္းလမ္းကို သင္တို႔အား ၫႊန္ၾကားမည္။ ယင္းသည္ အမွန္မုခ် ငါအလို႐ွိေသာ နည္းလမ္းျဖစ္၏။
လူအေပါင္းသည္ ငါ၏ သားသမီးမ်ားျဖစ္၏။ အသို႔နည္း၊ ငါ၏ သားသမီးမ်ားကို ပစၥဳပၸန္ တမလြန္ႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္းေသာ စီးပြားခ်မ္းသာကို ယွဥ္ေစလိုသကဲ့သို႔ လူအေပါင္း၌လည္း ငါအလို႐ွိ၏။
ႏိုင္ငံ၏ အပအစြန္အဖ်ား၌ ေနသူမ်ားသည္ ငါတို႔အေပၚ မင္းဘယ္သို႔ အလိုဆႏၵ ႐ွိသနည္းဟူမူ ထို အစြန္အဖ်ား၌ ေနသူမ်ားအေပၚ ငါ၏ အလိုဆႏၵ ဤသို႔တည္းဟု ေျပာၾကားရမည္။ “မင္းအလို႐ွိသည္မွာ သင္တို႔သည္ မင္းအား မေၾကာက္ၾကပဲ မင္းသည္ ငါတို႔ခ်မ္းသာကိုသာ ေဆာင္မည္။ ဆင္းရဲျဖစ္ေစလိမ့္မည္မဟုတ္ဟု မင္းအေပၚ ယံုၾကည္ရန္ ျဖစ္၏”
ထို႔ျပင္လည္း “မင္းသည္ သင္တို႔ အေပၚ သည္းခံႏိုင္သမွ် သည္းခံမည္၊ သင္တို႔သည္ မင္းကို အေၾကာင္းျပဳ၍ တရားက်င့္ၾကၿပီးလွ်င္ ပစၥဳပၸန္ တမလြန္ေလာက၏ စီးပြားခ်မ္းသာကို ခံစားၾကေလာ”ဟု ေျပာၾကားရမည္။
ဤအတြက္ သင္တို႔အား ငါၫႊန္ၾကား၏။ ယင္းသို႔ ၫႊန္ၾကားၿပီးေသာ္ ငါ၏ အလိုဆႏၵႏွင့္ ငါ၏ ပဋိညာဥ္ ၀န္ခံျခင္းတို႔ တည္တ့ံခိုင္ၿမဲျခင္းကို သင္တို႔အား သိေစသျဖင့္ ငါ၏ တာ၀န္ေက်ခဲ့ၿပီ။
ႏိုင္ငံမွ အပအစြန္အဖ်ား၌ ေနသူတို႔သည္ ႏွစ္သိမ့္ေရာင့္ရဲ၍ ငါ၏ အေပၚ ယံုၾကည္ ကိုးစားရန္ သင္တို႔ ျပဳမူၾကလ်က္ အမႈကိစၥတို႔ကို ေဆာင္႐ြက္ၾကရမည္။ “မင္းသည္ ငါတို႔၏ အဖျဖစ္၏။ မင္းသည္ မိမိကိုယ္ကို ျမတ္ႏိုးသကဲ့သို႔ ငါတို႔ကိုလည္း ျမတ္ႏိုး၏။ ငါတို႔သည္ မင္း၏ သားသမီးမ်ား ျဖစ္၏”ဟု ယံုၾကည္ကိုးစားေစရမည္။
ယင္းသို႔လွ်င္ သင္တို႔အား ငါၫႊန္ၾကား၏။ ငါ၏ အလိုဆႏၵႏွင့္ ငါ၏ ပဋိညာဥ္ ခံ၀န္ခ်က္တို႔ တည္တံ့ခိုင္ၿမဲျခင္းကိုလည္း သိေစ၏။ ဤအတြက္ အရပ္ေဒသအားလံုးမွာ အရာ႐ွိမ်ားကို ငါခန္႔ထားမည္။ သင္တို႔သည္ ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္မွ အပအစြန္အဖ်ားတို႔၌ ေနသူတို႔၏ ႏွစ္သိမ့္ေရာင့္ရဲမႈႏွင့္ ပစၥဳပၸန္တမလြန္ေလာက၏ စီးပြားခ်မ္းသာတို႔ကို ေဆာင္႐ြက္ႏိုင္၏။ သို႔ျဖင့္ သင္တို႔သည္ နတ္ခ်မ္းသာကို ရ၍ ငါ၏ ေႂကြးၿမီမွလည္း လြတ္ကင္းၾကေပလိမ့္မည္။
ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္မွအပ အစြန္အဖ်ား၌ ေနသူတို႔ ႏွစ္သိမ့္ေရာင့္ရဲ၍ တရားက်င့္ေဆာင္ေစရန္အတြက္ ငါ၏ အမတ္ႀကီးမ်ား အစဥ္ႀကိဳးစား အားထုတ္ၾကရန္ ဤစာကို ေရးေစျခင္းျဖစ္၏။ ဤစာကို ေလးလတႀကိမ္ ၾကားနာၾကရမည္။ ဖုသွ်နကၡတ္ႏွင့္ ယွဥ္ေသာ ေန႔တို႔ႏွင့္ စပ္ၾကားေနတို႔၌လည္း တေယာက္ထည္းျဖစ္ေစ ၾကားနာရမည္။ သို႔ျဖင့္ သင္တို႔သည္ ငါ၏ အလိုဆႏၵျပည့္စံုေစရန္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းၾကေလာ့။
(သိရီဓမၼာေသာကမင္းတရားႀကီး၏ ကိုးတိုင္းကိုးဌာန ဗုဒၶဓမၼႏိုင္ငံေတာ္-ဦးေသာ္ဇင္)

In the words of His Sacred Majesty the High Officers administering the town are to be addressed as follows: 'Whatsoever my views are I desire them to be acted on in practice and carried into effect by certain means. And in my opinion the chief means for this purpose are my instructions to you, because you have been set over many thousands of living beings that you may gain the affection of good men.
"All men are my children;” and, just as I desire for my children that they may enjoy every kind of prosperity and happiness both in this world and in the next, so also I desire the same for all men. You, however, do not grasp this truth to its full extent. Some individual, perchance, pays heed, but to a part only, not the whole. See then to this, for the principle of government is well established. Again, it happens that some individual incurs imprisonment or torture, and when the result is his imprisonment without due cause, many other people are deeply grieved. In such a case you must desire to do justice. However, with certain natural dispositions success is impossible, to wit, envy, lack of perseverance, harshness, impatience, want of application, laziness, indolence. You must desire that such dispositions be not yours. The root of the whole matter lies in perseverance and patience in applying this principle of government. The indolent man cannot rouse himself to move, yet one must needs move, advance, go on.
In the same way you must see to your duty, and be told to remember: “See to my commands; such and such are the instructions of His Sacred Majesty." Fulfillment of these bears great fruit, non-fulfillment brings great calamity. By those who fail neither heaven nor the royal favor can be won. Ill performance of this duty can never gain my regard, whereas in fulfilling my instructions you will gain heaven and also pay your debt to me. This scripture must be recited every constellation of Tishya day, and in the intervals between the Tishya days, on fit occasions it may be recited even to a single hearer. By such action you must endeavor to fulfill my intentions. For this purpose has this scripture been here inscribed in order that the administrators of the town may strive without ceasing [lit. "all the time "] that the restraint or torture of the townsmen may not take place without due cause. And for this purpose, in accordance with the Law of Piety, I shall send forth in rotation every five years such persons [lit. " a person "] as are of mild and temperate disposition, and regardful of the sanctity of life, who knowing this my purpose will comply with my instructions.
From Ujjain, however, the Prince for this purpose will send out a similar body [of officials], and will not over-pass three years. n the same way from Taxila. When the High Officers aforesaid . . . proceed on transfer in rotation, [then without neglecting their own [ordinary] business, they will attend to this matter also, and thus will carry out the king's instructions.'
(Asoka, the Buddhist Emperor of India- V. A. Smith)


His Sacred Majesty thus says: At Samapa the High Officers entitled to receive the king's messages are to be addressed as follows: Whatsoever I view (as right) I want to see how it can be executed in practice and fulfilled by proper means.
And this is regarded by me as the principal means to this end, viz., to give my instructions to you. All men are as my children; as, on behalf of my own children, I desire that they may be provided with complete welfare and happiness both in this world and the next, the same I desire also for all men. It might occur to the unconquered borderers (to ask): "What does the king desire with regard to us?”
This alone is my desire with regard to the borderers (that) they may understand that the king desires this (that) they should be free from fear of me, but should trust in me; (that) they would receive from me only happiness and not sorrow; that they should further understand (this) that the king will tolerate in them what can be tolerated; that they may be persuaded by me to practice Dharma or morality; (and that) they may gain both this world and the next. And for this purpose am I instructing you, (viz. that) by this do I render myself free from debt (to animate beings), that I instruct you, and make known to you my will, my determination, and promise, not to be shaken. Therefore acting thus, should you perform your duties and assure them that they may understand that "the king is to us even as a father ; (that) he feels for us even as he feels for himself; we are to him as his children.' By instructing you, and making known to you my will, my determination and vow inviolable, I shall have (i.e., post) for this end officers in all provinces. For you have the capacity to produce their confidence, their good and happiness both in this world and the next. Thus doing you will also win heaven and release from your obligations to me (or win me release from my debts). And for this purpose has this edict been inscribed in this place that the High Officers may be all the time at work for the confidence and practice of religion of these frontier peoples. This same edict is also to be proclaimed at the commencement of every quarter of the year on the Tisya day, and also in the intervals between the Tisya days and even to individuals, when an occasion offers. Thus working should you strive towards accomplishment.
(Asoka-R.K. Mookerji)


By order of the Beloved of the Gods; At Tosali the prince and the officers/ at Samapa the officers charged with announcing the royal decrees, are to be ordered thus: Whatever I approve of, that I desire either to achieve by taking action or to obtain by some effective means. This is what I consider the chief method in this matter, and these are my instructions to you. All men are my children and just as I desire for my children that they should obtain welfare and happiness both in this world and the next, the same do I desire for all men. If the unconquered peoples on my borders ask what is my will, they should be made to understand that this is my will with regard to them— ‘the king desires that they should have no trouble on his account, should trust in him, and should have in their dealings with him only happiness and no sorrow. They should understand that the king will forgive them as far as they can be forgiven, and that through him they should follow Dharma and gain this world and the next.’
For this purpose I instruct you, that having done so I may discharge my debt to them, by making known to you my will, my resolve and my firm promise. By these actions, my work will advance, and they will be reassured and will realize that the king is like a father, and that he feels for them as for himself, for they are like his own children to him. My couriers and special officers will be in contact with you, instructing you and making known to you my will, my resolve, and my firm promise. For you are able to give the frontier people confidence, welfare, and happiness in this world and the next. Doing this you will reach heaven and help me discharge my debt to my people.
This inscription has been engraved here for this purpose—that the officers shall act all times attend to the conciliation of the people of the frontiers and to promoting Dhamma among them. This edict is to be proclaimed every four months on the day of the star Tisya; it may optionally be proclaimed from time to time in the interval between Tisya-days, and on occasions may be proclaimed even to a single person. By doing this you will be able to conform to my instruction.
(Asoka and the decline of the Mauryas- Romila Thapar)


By the order of the Gods, the prince-viceroys and the mahamatras stationed at Tosalia and Samapa should be addressed thus: whatever I conceive (with the mind) I wish what? That I may put it into practice. And I consider this to be the chief instrument to this end, namely, instructions to you. All men are my children. As I wish for (my) children that they may be united with all well-being and happiness of this world and the next, similarly I wish it for all people.
It may be (in the mind) of the unconquered bordering kings ‘what is the desire of the king in our respect?’ This much only is my desire in respect to (the people) of the bordering kings, that they may understand (this), (that) the Beloved of the Gods wishes: ‘they should not be afraid of me, they should place confidence in me, (and) they will gain from me happiness not misfortune.’ And they should further know: ‘the emperor will tolerate with us to the extent he can possibly tolerate’; they should follow Dharma for my sake and attain this world and the next. For this purpose do I instruct you, namely, that having given you injunctions and expressed my desire, nay, my vow and oath, may I be free from debt (to them). Thus acting likewise you must do your duty and must inspire them with confidence, so that they might know: ‘the king is fatherly to us: he sympathises with us as he sympathises with himself; we are to the king as his children. So having instructed you and told the desire, my vow and oath, I will become emperor of the universe, for this end; for you are able to inspire them with confidence and (assure) their well-being and happiness of this world and the next. Acting thus you will gain heaven and fulfill your duty to me.
So for this purpose has this edict been inscribed: in order that mahamatras may remain engaged for a long time in creating confidence and establishing the practice of Dharma amongst themselves as well as amongst the bordering kings.
And this edict should be listened to during the Tisya naksatra every four monthly season and, of course, it may be listened to even by an individual on every festive occasion and also without the Tisya (period). By doing so, strive to discharge my instructions.
(Inscriptions of Asoka- N. P. Rastogi)

By command of the Beloved of the gods, the Prince Royal and the Mahamatras at Tosali should be addressed (as follow): whatever I perceive (with the mind), I desire—what—that I may put it into action; and I initiate it through the proper means. And I deem this to be the principal means to this end, namely instructions to you. All men are my offspring. Just as for (my) offspring I desire that they may be united with all welfare and happiness of this world and of the next, precisely do I desire it for all men.
It may be (in the mind) of (the people) the unconquered frontier sovereigns: ‘what is the will of the king in respect of us?’ This much alone is my wish in regard to (the people) of the frontier sovereigns, that they may understand (this), namely, that the beloved of the gods desires: ‘they should be unperturbed towards me, they should trust mine, (and) they would receive from me happiness, not misery.’ And they should further understand: ‘the king will bear with us as far as it is possible to bear,’ (but) they should follow Dhamma for my sake and gain this world and the next. For this end do I instruct you, namely, that having given you instructions and made known my will, nay, my immovable resolve and vow, may I be free from debt (to them)! So acting accordingly, you must discharge your functions and must inspire them with confidence, so that they might understand: ‘the king is to us even as a father; he sympathises with us even as he sympathises with himself; we are to the king even as (his) children.’ So having instructed you and intimated the will, my immovable resolve and vow, I shall become a sovereign over all countries for this object; for you are competent to inspire them with confidence and (ensure) their welfare and happiness of this world and the next. By so doing you will gain heaven and also discharge your debt to me.
And for this purpose has this document been here written: in order that the Mahamatras may be devoted to the eternal rule of conduct for inspiring (the people of) those frontier sovereigns with confidence and ensuring (their) practice of Dhamma. And this document should be heard on the Tishya day every four-monthly season; the Tishya days it may be heard even by one (official). By acting thus, endeavor to fulfill (my instructions).
(Asoka- D.R. Bhandarkar)