Ashoka the Great

Ashoka the Great at a Glance

Full Name: Ashoka Maurya, also known as Ashoka the Great (Sanskrit: Asoka) Royal Titles: Devanampiya Piyadasi -- Beloved of the Gods, He Who Looks on Everyone with Affection Born: Circa 304 BC, Pataliputra (modern Patna, Bihar, India) Died: Circa 232 BC, Pataliputra Reign: Circa 268 BC to 232 BC Dynasty: Maurya Father: Emperor Bindusara, second Maurya emperor Mother: Subhadrangi, also called Dharma, a queen of Brahmin origin from Champa Grandfather: Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Maurya Empire Religion: Converted from Vedic Brahmanism to Buddhism following the Kalinga War, circa 263 BC Pre-Conversion Epithet: Chandashoka, meaning Fierce Ashoka Post-Conversion Epithet: Dhammashoka, meaning Righteous Ashoka Key Inscriptions: 14 Major Rock Edicts, 7 Pillar Edicts, Minor Rock Edicts, and the Kalinga Separate Edicts Languages of Edicts: Pali, Prakrit, Greek, and Aramaic Notable Achievements: Waged and then publicly repudiated the Kalinga War; promulgated the Edicts of Ashoka across the subcontinent in multiple languages; convened the Third Buddhist Council at Pataliputra circa 250 BC; dispatched Buddhist missions to Sri Lanka and the Hellenistic world; constructed an estimated 84,000 stupas according to Buddhist tradition; built hospitals for humans and animals; planted shade trees and dug wells along major roads Symbolic Legacy: His Lion Capital of Sarnath became India's national emblem in 1950; the Ashoka Chakra appears at the center of India's national flag Rediscovery: British scholar James Prinsep deciphered the Brahmi script of the edicts in 1837, restoring Ashoka to historical memory after nearly two thousand years of obscurity

Introduction

Among all the rulers who have shaped the course of human civilization, Ashoka Maurya stands in a category largely his own. He was, in the first phase of his reign, a conqueror and consolidator who brought nearly the entire Indian subcontinent under a single imperial authority, wielding power with a ferocity that earned him the epithet Chandashoka -- Fierce Ashoka. He was, in the second and far longer phase of his reign, a man profoundly and permanently transformed -- a sovereign who, horrified by the carnage he had himself unleashed upon the people of Kalinga, turned away from military conquest and dedicated the remaining decades of his rule to the promotion of moral virtue, religious tolerance, social welfare, and nonviolence. No other monarch in the ancient world left a comparable documentary record of his own inner transformation, for Ashoka caused his convictions and his moral aspirations to be carved into rock faces and raised on tall, polished sandstone pillars at strategic locations across an empire stretching from Afghanistan to Bengal and from the foothills of the Himalayas to the southernmost reaches of the Deccan plateau.

The story of Ashoka is also the story of Buddhism's transformation from a regional Indian ethical and philosophical movement into a world religion. Under his patronage and through the missionaries he dispatched, the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama reached Sri Lanka, Central Asia, the Hellenistic kingdoms of western Asia, and in all probability Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean world. His son Mahinda carried the dharma to Sri Lanka, where Theravada Buddhism took permanent root and would eventually spread to Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. His daughter Sanghamitta brought a living cutting of the original Bodhi Tree -- the tree under which the Buddha had attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya -- and planted it in Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, where according to tradition it still stands today as the oldest cultivated tree in the world with a verified planting date of circa 288 BC. When modern scholars speak of the extraordinary spread of Buddhist civilization across the Asian continent in the centuries following Ashoka's reign, they are describing consequences that flow in a direct line from decisions this one ruler made more than two thousand years ago.

Yet for nearly two millennia after his death, Ashoka was almost entirely forgotten. His edicts stood in plain sight, inscribed on rock outcrops and tall pillars that travelers passed every day, but no living person in the world could read the ancient Brahmi script in which they were composed. It was not until 1837 that a British scholar and East India Company official named James Prinsep finally deciphered the script and identified the mysterious emperor who called himself Devanampiya Piyadasi. Today Ashoka is recognized as one of the most consequential rulers in all of world history -- a figure whose influence on governance, ethics, and religion has outlasted empires, languages, and entire civilizations.

The great historian H. G. Wells, surveying the long procession of kings and conquerors who fill the columns of history, wrote that amidst the tens of thousands of names of monarchs that crowd the columns of history, their majesties and graciousnesses and serenities and royal highnesses and the like, the name of Ashoka shines, and shines, almost alone, a star. This judgment captures something essential about what makes Ashoka remarkable: not the size of his empire or the number of soldiers in his armies, but the quality of his moral vision and his extraordinary determination to translate that vision into the actual practice of governance across a vast and diverse realm.