The Translation Of The Edicts Of Gotama Buddha

Aggañña-sutta

The divine force in the Aggañña-sutta is the Blessed One, Gotama Buddha, who teaches the Dhamma to two Brahmins. In the line, “Monks, you were (both) born brahmins, in brahmin families, (but) you have gone forth from home to homelessness, (leaving your) Brahmin family, (Collins 339)” he expounds upon and teaches the Dhamma to his students, and praises them for leaving the most privileged class in order to become ascetics of a sect, and taking the abuse from the primarily Hindu society they thus shun. This praise is twofold, once for converting to Buddhism and the other implying that the spread of the Dhamma is in itself meritorious.

This ties in with the translation of the Edicts of Asoka translated by Romila Thapar, in that the pursuit of Buddhist knowledge and the spread of the Dhamma is actually part of the law, as is stated in many of the edicts such as the 3rd, 9th, 10th, and 12th Major Rock Edicts. For example, in the 3rd Major Rock Edict it is stated that, “Everywhere in my [King Piyadassi’s] empire, the yuktas [subordinate officers] with the rajukas [rural administrators] and the pradesikas [heads of the districts], shall go on tour every five years, in order

To be specific, the belief in Heaven’s Mandate was what legitimized the codified Da Ming lü and provided the basis upon which people followed the law. As Yonglin Jiang analyzed in her article The Mandate of Heaven and the Great Ming Code, “Zhu Yuanzhang decided to restructure his capital city, Nanjing, to correspond more closely with the heavenly pattern. […] Facing south in the Hall of Service to Heaven, the emperor displayed his cosmic status as Son of Heaven and father to his subjects. (Jiang 22)” At the time of the founding of the Ming dynasty, most of China believed in Heavens Mandate, and more importantly, the cosmology that defines