HOW TM KRISHNA TURNED EMPEROR ASHOKA’S ‘ENVIRONMENTAL’ MESSAGES INTO MUSIC
Nayanjot Lahiri & TM Krishna
Historian Nayanjot Lahiri and the musician discuss their collaboration to reimagine Ashoka’s words through a contemporary prism.
This conversation revolves around Emperor Ashoka’s messages that resonate with the theme of ecology. Did the emperor see all living beings, humans and others, in the same way? Did the state’s relationship with living beings like animals and birds change over time? How did Ashoka engage with forest people and how does ecology figure in his messages about polities beyond the his empire?
Historian Nayanjot Lahiri drew musician TM Krishna’s attention to such themes in Ashoka’s edicts some years ago. Now, the vocalist has rendered the emperor’s “environmental” messages in his extraordinarily evocative voice.
That one of the royal messages is inscribed on the outskirts of Kandahar in Afghanistan imparts a unique flavour to Ashoka’s presence. This is not merely because the message was carried beyond the Indian subcontinent, and that to a region far distant from the emperor’s capital of Pataliputra, but because the epigraphic scrawls in Kandahar are inscribed in both Greek and Aramaic. Evidently, part of Ashoka’s ancient audiences were familiar with the languages.
TM Krishna, as always revels in musical challenges. Here, the musician speaks about how he sang words that were entirely alien to his musical palate and how this adventure unfolded.
This segment of the “Edict Project”, a collaboration between TM Krishna and Ashoka University, reimagines Ashoka’s words through a contemporary prism.
TM Krishna: We are in this incredibly beautiful forest with Nayanjot Lahiri for a discussion about Ashoka and ecology, a topic one would not usually connect with a monarch. Tell us why you chose this particular locale for our conversation.
Nayanjot Lahiri: So, we are here to discuss an emperor and ecology and I thought Mangar Bani would an ideal setting. My own relationship with Mangar goes back to the 1990s when I was doing archaeological fieldwork with a couple of colleagues around old settlement sites when we came to Mangar and encountered this forest which has survived because of local people
I don’t know how ancient the history of the forest is but that there are people like Sunil Harsana in the village and environmentalists like Chetan Agarwal and others who have managed to save it is amazing. I thought to myself: while Ashoka was a remarkable emperor – it is rare to find an emperor talking about animals and forests and about saving them – it is, equally remarkable to have villagers who have saved the only surviving natural forest in the suburbs of India’s national capital.
I wanted to ask you a related question. Earlier too, you have sung the words of Ashoka in which ecology has featured. Tell me, how do you see your earlier rendition in relation to these words?
TM Krishna: In the words I sang earlier, where Ashoka is talking of royal yatras – dhamma yatras instead of hunting or hunting as royal performance – here he also talks of how animals should be treated in his territory; not just about how he would conduct himself but what he would expect from his people. There is a clear directive from the emperor, to not kill certain species. His own self-transformation represents both a spiritual and political journey. How do you see that?
Nayanjot Lahiri: Being a historian by training, I see his edicts by contextualising the words chronologically. What did he say first? How did the message change? How did it evolve?
For example, in his first words (Minor Rock Edict 2) he’s talking about obedience to parents and in the same breath about compassion for living beings which clearly include animals. He says this is an ancient law, an ancient tradition. He soon becomes very voluble, and in a far more imperial tone he lays down the law for his subjects.
In the Major Rock Edicts he declares that no animals should be killed for sacrifice. Given that sacrifice is central to Hinduism, this would surely have been seen as anti-brahmanical. In the same rock edicts, he gives his own example: in the royal kitchen, earlier, hundreds of animals and birds were killed daily, now only three were killed every day – two birds and one animal. And he says that too shall cease, as though reassuring his subjects that even in the palace reducing meat eating was a work in progress.
Between the Minor Rock Edicts and Pillar Edicts, 16 years elapsed. Ashoka is ageing and, at one level, has become more pragmatic. In his famous Fifth Pillar Edict – the first major environmental statement made anywhere in antiquity – there is this a list of creatures not to be killed (wild and domesticated animals and birds). Alongside, Ashoka is equally interested in protecting the environment. He says the husk in which there are living creatures should not be burnt. What he is telling his subjects to do is reduce cruelty to animals, not saying that cruelty will disappear.
TM Krishna: Can we presume that there is feedback from the emperor’s subjects and governors that what he is saying is not actionable?
Nayanjot Lahiri: That is worth thinking about because when you look at what he is asking or telling his people to do is in a way hugely dictatorial. In the Afghanistan edict (in Kandahar) in the words you have sung, he is saying that only little is killed for feeding him; consequently, hunters have stopped hunting and fishermen have stopped fishing.
TM Krishna: That seems rather unlikely.
Nayanjot Lahiri: Even in Afghanistan those who heard these words would have taken them with a large pinch of salt.
No doubt, the emperor was trying to protect living beings and their habitats. But what about the people who depend upon the forest? In fact, in his famous Kalinga edict, there is a sense that he is threatening forest dwellers. Were that so, there must have been a pushback.
There is something extraordinary about one of the edicts which is in Greek and Aramaic. You were insistent that you wanted to sing the words…
TM Krishna: The earlier edicts I have sung, when I first heard, say, Magadhan Prakrit, it was a language for which I didn’t have a musical sound. How does something translate into music, how does a syllable move, how does a consonant move, how does a vowel move – these movements happen intuitively. Prakrit is a language I didn’t know, so I had to spend a lot of listening time to set the words to music. This was one part, one stage.
Now, the Greek and Aramaic. Since Greek is a living language, I was able to get people to recite the Greek edict. Aramaic posed a problem because it is a lost language. I struggled for six months to find a scholar willing to attempt to recite those words. They all said they could only use the present-day understanding of the language to try to recite the words. So here was a language that did not have even a linguistic sonic vocabulary to which one could refer.
It was hard to first imagine the language, then imagine the sound. I had to find someone who could enunciate the words before I could vocalise them. According to this person, “This is just an interpretation of how it sounds, we don’t know how it originally sounded.” And then, what kind of music to put it to? Should the words be recited? Or put to tune? Could I take liberties?
Nayanjot Lahiri: The edicts are in prose. And you have taken the liberty of singing the words…
TM Krishna: Exactly. Prose is technically not to be sung. And we don’t know what this language sounded like. But this creates a new musical language. Also, you have to feel the music, it is not just about the sounds; so how does one evoke the feeling in a language whose sounds we don’t know. That’s why I insisted on vocalising in Aramaic as I wanted to know for myself what it means to sing in a language for which there is no sonic palate.
Nayanjot Lahiri: This was really ambitious of you. When you first said you would sing in these unfamiliar languages this, I couldn’t believe my ears.
TM Krishna: What has been done here is that the bilingual edict has been divided into two parts, the first in Aramaic and the second in Greek.
To move to another subject altogether: a facet especially in today’s discourse of environmentalism is that of a highly human-centric perception. Ashoka, though, did something unusual when he spoke about medicinal plants and hospitals: he said these were not just for human beings but for livestock as well, an unprecedented equalization of species, a very evolved idea indeed.
Nayanjot Lahiri: Actually, this repeatedly strikes one in the pillar edicts: he says he has provided spiritual insight and, in some cases, even given life to bipeds and quadrupeds. Usually, human beings are seen at the top in the hierarchy of living beings. That is how kings would perceive it. But here is a ruler who feels his moral credibility depends upon governing equitably, not just his people but also the animals in his territory.
TM Krishna: For an emperor to see the value of the need to save wild animals or birds is not just unusual…to think that their survival matters, is truly extraordinary.
Nayanjot Lahiri: Today, protected animals are the ones that are endangered. But in the case of Ashoka, protection of animals is purely out of compassion. Nothing to do with the danger of extinction of species or anything like that. This shows a qualitatively different intent – Ashoka feels that to be a morally credible monarch, this is what he has to do.
TM Krishna: At the same time, we should not create a hagiography around Ashoka. The forest people, he is threatening them: remember I am the emperor and I have violence as a tool.
Nayanjot Lahiri: It really comes back to the fact that the state cannot control all its land, nor control all its people. The kingdom is dependent on the forest. The army has to have a unit of elephants. These elephants live in the forests till they reach adulthood. And the people looking after them? It is the forest dwellers.
Ironically, Ashoka says there should be no needless destruction of forests, but yet he wants complete power over the people who live there. Elsewhere, he is issuing injunctions, telling people not to sacrifice animals, telling people what to eat and what not to eat, telling hunters and fisher folk that on particular days they should not be following their professional calling…Just as today, if the state were to tell its citizens what to eat and what not to eat, they would find that utterly resentful.
TM Krishna: That’s a violation of fundamental rights. Enforcement of something ethical like the protection of animals often is not questioned because we believe the ‘intention’ is good. But who determines what is a compassionate action, what is an ethical action? Perhaps, that’s why you see the pushback coming. In many regions of his territory, people wondered what were these crazy things he was telling them. We are going to eat what we want to eat…
Nayanjot Lahiri: Archaeologically speaking, too, there is no reduction in the consumption of animal flesh. So people must have heard the emperor but gone and done their own thing. However, in terms of environmental and political thought, it was a major moment. Not in terms of impact.
TM Krishna: That’s the whole issue. We want to fix Ashoka in one frame. For an emperor to think in this way at that time and share his thoughts with his praja is one part and then on the other hand, one realizes that the state can’t force people to behave in a certain manner, however good your thought process may be.
I am going to shift track a bit because in the edicts that I have sung now, for the first time we get the name of a scribe. Chapada…tell us about him.
Nayanjot Lahiri: Our scribe – his name is on three edicts in Karnataka ( in Brahmagiri, Siddapura and Jatinga-Rameshwara) – wrote his name in Kharoshthi, a script which is generally used in the northwest. There could be two messages here: one, the scribe conveying that he is highly accomplished and knew both Brahmi and Kharoshthi; two, he was signalling where he came from.
You must feel an affinity with him. Like him, by engaging with words in different languages, your vocal accomplishments become evident to your audiences.
TM Krishna (laughingly agreeing): Yes, but why was he the only scribe to inscribe his name in the edicts? Was he powerful, was he famous in the area?
Nayanjot Lahiri: You feel an affinity with the emperor, that is well known. At the same time you feel the same way about a common scribe who is uncommonly skilled is a revelation.
TM Krishna: Absolutely. Seeing Chapada’s name there really touched my soul.
Then there is the other thing about areas that Ashoka names beyond his empire…
Nayanjot Lahiri: You are particularly fascinated that the Kerala putras figure in his edicts as do the Cholas, and Tamraparani which is likely Sri Lanka. Whether this was consciously done or inadvertently but Ashoka’s subjects, listening to the recitation of the names of these polities would have felt that they were part of a vast empire stretching from the northwest to practically the edge of peninsular India.
TM Krishna: I was told that this is one of the earliest references to the word “Kerala”. The word has been around for thousands of years!
I want to once again thank you Nayanjot, for this discussion that has gone from ecology to the emperor’s thoughts and to our fundamental rights as also to the relationship between ‘praja’ and raja. What’s fascinating is that Ashoka still speaks to us and compels us to think of the way of how we treat this beautiful world around us.
Nayanjot Lahiri: It is an exceptional monarch that we are looking at and I’m so happy that you feel an affinity to him, just as I do.