४३० डॉ. बाबासाहेब आंबेडकर लेखन आणि भाषणे
and noble manhood. This was the devotees into the lesson of powerful
time was to conquer with the aid of the reason why India at that able
and at the same time religion not only its own spirit but the world as well
and spiritualprogress. The unite by dint of its own spiritual force material
Christian civilization of Europe was then not even dreamt of. The rediance of the sacred mission of a life of hardships and selfless love is now obscured by artificiality and excess of emotions, but has it been extinguished?” *
जगातील सम्राटातील सर्वोच्च गणलेल्या सम्राट अशोकाचा मानवतावाद,
रवींद्रनाथ टागोर खालीलप्रमाणे विशद करताना म्हणतात,
“ Asoka, the greatest of the emperors among the world, got carved on rocks the words he desired should permanently remian for people to hear. He knew that the rocks would never wear away but would stand immobile on the roadside of eternity, reciting the same message to the wayfarers through endless ages. He gave the rocks speech to carry out
this task.
Irrespective of ages, the rocks had borne his words. Whereis Asoka gone, where is Pataliputra now, where are the glorious days of religiously awake India ? The rocks have been reiterating still today those few words in the foregotten script of an obsolete language. They have cried in the wilderness for long, long years in the forest. The noble words of Asoka also, like people bereft of speech, had tried to attract, by silent gestures, the attention of mankind, the Rajputs, the Pathans, the Mughais had travelled along this route, the words of the bargis, like quick flashes of lightening, had spread debacle far and wide, but none had heeded their silent gestures. There was a smali island on the other side of the ocean whose existence Asoka had not dreamt of. At the time when Asoka's
artisans had been inscribing his edicts on the rocks, the poor silvan people of the island had been sculpting their religious feelings on mounds of mute stone. Many thousands of year later, a foreign visitor from that island came and recovered his language from the coils of dumb signs in which time hadsolongenmeshedthem. The will of soverign Asoka was fulfilled after so may centuries through the enterprise of aforeigner. His message was nothing more than this : however great a monarch might be, he must let even a way farer know what he wants or not, what he considers good and what he considers evil. His thought had been standing on the wayside for all these ages longing to find a refuge in the mind of every man. Towards that earnest yearning of the sovereign some of the passers-by had cast a glance and some had gone by unheeding.
However, what | intend to say is not that Asoka’s edicts are literature buttnat they atleast prove what the main urge of the human heartis. We
First Published in—
$ Yatrarpurbapatra (Pather Sanchaya), Tattwabodhini Patrika, Asarh, 1319.