Aśoka

Aśoka (Pāli Asoka, “without sorrow”; r. c. 268–232 BCE) was the third emperor of the Maurya dynasty and ruler of the largest empire in Indian history before the British, stretching from Afghanistan to Bengal and south to Karnataka. After a bloody war of conquest against Kaliṅga (modern Odisha) about eight years into his reign, he underwent a moral conversion, became a lay Buddhist, and announced a new policy of government by dhamma (Sanskrit dharma): non-violence, tolerance of all religious sects, honesty, compassion, respect for parents and teachers, generosity to Brahmins and ascetics alike, welfare for humans and animals, and restraint in killing. He proclaimed these ideals in a remarkable series of edicts carved on rocks and polished sandstone pillars across his empire — the oldest surviving deciphered written documents of India — in which he speaks in the first person with startling candour. He patronised Buddhism, sent missions abroad, and is remembered in Buddhist tradition as the model righteous king, the dharmarāja. His emblem became the emblem of the Indian republic.

The Maurya empire

Aśoka was the grandson of Candragupta Maurya, who founded the empire around 321 BCE after the withdrawal of Alexander the Great from the Indus, with the help (by tradition) of his minister Kauṭilya, author of the Arthaśāstra. Candragupta defeated Alexander’s general Seleucus, who ceded territories in Afghanistan and sent an ambassador, Megasthenes, to the Mauryan capital Pāṭaliputra (Patna), whose Indica survives in fragments. Aśoka’s father Bindusāra extended the empire south.

Life

The fierce king

Buddhist legends — the Sanskrit Aśokāvadāna and the Sri Lankan chronicles Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa — tell that the young Aśoka was ugly, violent and ambitious; that he fought his brothers for the throne after his father’s death, killing ninety-nine of them; and that he built a torture chamber, “Aśoka’s hell”, before his conversion. These stories, written by Buddhists eager to dramatise his conversion, should be treated with caution; Aśoka’s own edicts mention his brothers as alive.

Kaliṅga

What is certain, from his own words, is the war against Kaliṅga, about eight years after his coronation (c. 261 BCE). His Thirteenth Major Rock Edict describes it and its aftermath with a frankness unique among ancient rulers:

When the Beloved of the Gods, King Piyadasi, had been consecrated eight years, the Kaliṅgas were conquered. A hundred and fifty thousand people were deported, a hundred thousand were killed, and many times that number perished. Afterwards, now that Kaliṅga was annexed, the Beloved of the Gods very earnestly practised dhamma, desired dhamma, and taught dhamma. On conquering Kaliṅga, 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 weighs heavily on his mind.

He goes on to say that even a hundredth or thousandth part of those who suffered in Kaliṅga would now grieve him; that he wishes all beings to be unharmed, self-controlled, calm in mind and gentle; and that “the Beloved of the Gods considers that the greatest of all conquests is the conquest by dhamma”. He warns forest tribes that he has power as well as remorse, but tells his successors not to seek new conquests, or, if they must, to prefer mercy and light punishment.

The lay Buddhist

Aśoka became a Buddhist lay follower (upāsaka), and later, he says, “approached the Saṅgha” and became zealous. He went on pilgrimage to the sites of the Buddha’s life — Lumbinī, where a pillar records his visit and his exemption of the village from tax, and Bodh Gayā. Buddhist tradition says he built 84,000 stūpas over the Buddha’s relics, including the original form of the Great Stūpa at Sāñcī, and convened the Third Buddhist Council at Pāṭaliputra under the monk Moggaliputta Tissa to purify the Saṅgha. He sent missions to spread the dhamma: to Sri Lanka, his son Mahinda and daughter Saṅghamittā; to Gandhāra, Kashmir, the Himālaya, Suvarṇabhūmi (perhaps lower Burma) and the Greek kingdoms of the West — his edicts name Antiochus II of Syria, Ptolemy II of Egypt, Antigonus of Macedonia, Magas of Cyrene and Alexander of Epirus.

Death and legend

He died around 232 BCE; the empire declined within fifty years. Later Buddhist legends describe his old age as sad: his ministers stopped his lavish gifts to the Saṅgha, until he had only half a myrobalan fruit left to give.

The edicts

The edicts are the core of Aśoka’s legacy. They include fourteen Major Rock Edicts (at sites like Girnar, Kalsi, Dhauli, Jaugada, Shahbazgarhi), several Minor Rock Edicts, seven Pillar Edicts on polished sandstone pillars crowned with animal capitals, and others. Most are in Prakrit in the Brāhmī script; those in the north-west use Kharoṣṭhī; the Kandahar inscriptions are in Greek and Aramaic. They were unreadable for nearly two millennia until the British scholar James Prinsep deciphered Brāhmī in 1837.

Their themes:

• Non-violence: Aśoka restricted the killing of animals; the First Rock Edict says that formerly hundreds of thousands of animals were killed daily for the royal kitchen, but now only two peacocks and a deer, and soon not even these. He banned certain animal sacrifices and festivals involving killing.
• Welfare: he established medical treatment for humans and animals, had medicinal herbs planted, wells dug, and shade trees and rest houses placed along roads (Second Rock Edict).
• Tolerance: the Twelfth Rock Edict is one of the great statements of religious tolerance in the ancient world: “The Beloved of the Gods honours all sects, both ascetics and householders… One should not honour only one’s own sect and condemn the sects of others without reason… By honouring other sects one strengthens one’s own sect and helps the others. Whoever honours his own sect and condemns other sects, out of devotion to his own, in order to glorify it, in fact injures his own sect most gravely. Concord alone is commendable.”
• Officials of dhamma: he appointed dhamma-mahāmattas to promote welfare and justice, and instructed officials to tour regularly, to treat prisoners fairly and to work at all times: “At all times, whether I am eating, in the women’s quarters, in my inner apartments, in the cattle-shed, in my carriage or in my gardens, reporters should report to me on the people’s affairs” (Sixth Rock Edict).
• Paternalism: “All men are my children; just as I desire for my own children that they obtain every kind of welfare and happiness in this world and the next, so I desire for all men” (Separate Kaliṅga Edict).

Aśoka’s dhamma in the edicts is largely ethical, not doctrinal: it rarely mentions specifically Buddhist teachings like the Four Noble Truths or nirvāṇa. Historians debate whether it was Buddhism, a civic morality for a multi-religious empire, or both.

Legacy

Aśoka was largely forgotten in India after the Maurya collapse — though remembered vividly in Buddhist Asia — until Prinsep’s decipherment revealed him to the world. In the twentieth century he became a symbol of the ideal Indian state. At independence, India adopted the Lion Capital of Sārnāth — four Asiatic lions standing back to back on an abacus decorated with a horse, a bull, an elephant and a lion separated by wheels — as its national emblem, with the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad’s satyameva jayate beneath it, and placed the 24-spoked Aśoka Chakra at the centre of the national flag. B. R. Ambedkar chose Aśoka Vijayadaśamī, the anniversary of Aśoka’s traditional conversion, for his mass conversion to Buddhism in 1956.

Aśoka in conversation

The Thirteenth Rock Edict is the only royal inscription in history that confesses remorse for a victory. And the Twelfth gives the best ancient argument for tolerance: whoever condemns other sects to glorify his own, injures his own most of all.