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Chapter 6 – Asoka Maurya

According to credible tradition, Asoka-vardhana, or Asoka, as he is generally called, served his apprenticeship to the art of government during the lifetime of his father, Bindusara, as viceroy successively of the north-western frontier province and of Western India. He was one of several sons, and was no doubt selected by his father, in accordance with the usual practice, as Yuvaraja, or crown prince, on account of his ability and fitness for the imperial succession.

Taxila, the capital of the north-western viceroyalty, which probably included Kashmir, the Panjab, and the provinces to the west of the Indus, was in those days one of the greatest and most splendid of the cities of the East, and enjoyed a special reputation as the headquarters of Hindu learning. The sons of people of all the upper classes, chiefs, Brahmans, and merchants, flocked to Taxila, as to a university town, in order to study the circle of Indian arts and sciences. The territory surrounding the capital was rich and populous, and, two generations earlier, had formed a small independent

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state, weak enough to be in terror of its neighbours, and yet strong enough to render Alexander valuable assistance.

The Greeks, who considered the little state to be well governed, noted with interest , and without disapprobation, the local customs, which included polygamy, the exposure of the dead to be devoured by vultures, and the sale in open market of maidens who had failed to secure husbands in the ordinary course.

Old astronomical observatory at Ujjain.

The position of the city on the highroad from Central Asia to the interior of India fitted it to be the capital of the north-western viceroy, and its strategical advantages are still recognized. Hasan Abdal, close to its ruins, is a favourite ground for the manoeuvres of the Indian army, and at Rawalpindi, a few miles to the southeast, a huge cantonment guards the road to India against possible Alexanders advancing from the northwest.

Ujjain, the capital of Western India, was equally famous, and equally suitable as the seat of a viceregal government. Reckoned to be one of the seven sacred cities, and standing on the road leading from the busy

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ports of the western coast to the markets of the interior, it combined the advantages of a favourite place of pilgrimage with those of a great commercial depot. The city was recognized as the headquarters of Indian astronomy, and latitudes were computed from its meridian.

The Ceylonese tradition that Asoka was residing at Ujjain when he was summoned to the capital by the news of his father’s mortal illness may well be believed, but no credence can be given to the tales which relate that Asoka had a hundred brothers, ninety-nine of whom he slew, and so forth. These idle stories seem to have been invented chiefly in order to place a dark background of early wickedness behind the bright picture of his mature piety. Asoka certainly had brothers and sisters alive in the seventeenth year of his reign, whose households were objects of his anxious care; and there is nothing to indicate that he regarded his relatives with jealousy. His grandfather, Chandragupta, “a man of blood and iron,” who had fought his way from poverty and exile to the imperial throne, naturally was beset by jealousies and hatreds, and constrained to live a life of distrustful suspicion. But Asoka, who was born in the purple and inherited an empire firmly established by half a century of masterful rule, presumably was free from the “black care” which haunted his ancestor. His edicts display no sense of insecurity or weakness from first to last, and the probability is that he succeeded peaceably in accordance with his predecessor’s nomination.

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Inasmuch as the reign of Asoka lasted for fully forty years, he must have been a young man when, in the year 272 B.C., he undertook the government of the vast empire which had been won and kept by his grandfather and father. Nothing is recorded concerning the first eleven years of his rule, which were spent presumably in the current work of administration. His solemn coronation did not take place until the year 269 B.C., about three years after his accession, and this fact is the only circumstance which supports the notion that his succession was disputed. The anniversary of his coronation was always celebrated with ceremony and specially marked by the pardon and release of prisoners.

In the twelfth year of his reign, or the ninth, as reckoned from the coronation, Asoka embarked upon the one aggressive war of his life, and rounded off his dominions by the conquest of the kingdom of Kalinga, the strip of territory extending along the coast of the Bay of Bengal from the Mahanadi to the Godavari. The campaign was wholly successful, and Kalinga became an integral part of the Maurya dominions. Two special edicts published a few years later show that the administration of the newly acquired territory caused much anxiety to the emperor, who, like all sovereigns, sometimes was not well served by his officers. The royal instructions, which enjoined just and paternal government, and specially insisted on sympathetic, tactful treatment of the wilder tribes, were disregarded at times by officials, who had to be warned that disobedience of

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orders was not the way to win the favour either of heaven or their master.

The kingdom of Kalinga had maintained a considerable military force, which was estimated by Megasthenes as numbering sixty thousand infantry, one thousand cavalry, and seven hundred war elephants. The opposition offered to the invaders was so stubborn that the conquest involved immeasurable suffering. The victor records with sorrow that 150,000 persons were carried into captivity, one hundred thousand were slain, and that many times that number perished from famine, pestilence, and the other calamities which follow in the train of armies.

The sight of all this misery and the knowledge that he alone had caused it smote the conscience of Asoka, and awakened in his breast feelings of “remorse, profound sorrow, and regret.” These feelings crystallized into a steadfast resolve that never again would ambition lead him to inflict such grievous wrongs upon his fellow creatures, and four years after the conquest he was able to declare that “the loss of even the hundredth or the thousandth part of the persons who were then slain, carried away captive, or done to death in Kalinga would now be a matter of deep regret to his Majesty.”

The king acted up to the principles which he professed, and abstained from aggressive war for the rest of his life. About this time he came under the influence of Buddhist teaching, his devotion to which increased more and more as the years rolled on. The “chiefest

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conquest,” he declares, is that won by the Law of Piety, and he begs his descendants to rid themselves of the popular notion that conquest by arms is the duty of kings; and, even if they should find themselves engaged in warfare, he reminds them that they might still find pleasure in patience and gentleness, and should regard as the only true conquest that which is effected through the Law of Piety.

Asoka from this time forth made it the business of his life to employ his unlimited autocratic power over a vast empire in the teaching, propagation, and enforcement of the ethical system which he called the Law of Piety (dhamma) and had learned chiefly from his Buddhist instructors.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth years of his reign, he definitely decided upon his line of action, and proclaimed the principles of his government to his people in a series of fourteen edicts engraved upon the rocks, and laid down the general rules which must guide the conduct of the lieges. These extraordinary documents were followed by others specially concerning the conquered province of Kalinga, the purport of which has been referred to above.

In the year 249 B.C., when he had occupied the throne for twenty-three years, Asoka made a solemn pilgrimage to the most sacred spots in the Buddhist Holy Land. Starting from Pataliputra, the capital, he advanced northwards along the royal road, the course of which is marked by five great monolithic pillars, through the districts now known as Muzaffarpur and Charaparan,

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until he approached the base of the outer Himalayan range.

Probably he then turned westwards, without crossing the hills, and first visited the famous Lumbini Garden, – the Bethlehem of Buddhism, – where, according to the legend, the pains of travail came upon Maya, and she gave birth to Buddha as she stood under a tree. At this spot his guide and preceptor, Upagupta, addressed Asoka and said: “Here, great king! was the Venerable One born.” A pillar inscribed with these words, still as legible as when they were incised, was set up by Asoka to preserve the memory of his visit, and stands to this day.

In due course Saint Upagupta led his royal disciple to Kapilavastu, the home of Buddha’s childhood; to Sarnath, near Benares, the scene of the Master’s first success as a preacher; to Sravasti, where he lived for many years; to the Bodhi tree of Gaya, where he overcame the powers of darkness; and to Kusinagara, where he died. At all these holy places the king granted liberal endowments, and set up memorials, some of which have come to light in these latter days, after long ages of oblivion.

In the year 242 B.C., when his reign had lasted for thirty years, Asoka undertook a formal retrospect of all the measures adopted by him in furtherance of the ethical reforms which he had at heart, and took the opportunity of laying down a concise code of regulations concerning the slaughter and mutilation of animals, practices which he regarded with abhorrence.

Birthplace of Buddha

Pillar Erected by King Asoka in Lumbini Garden.

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Tope at Sarnath, near Benares

About two years later, Asoka, recognizing fully the validity of the Buddhist doctrine that no laymen could attain nirvana, determined to ensure his final deliverance from rebirth so far as possible by entering the

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order of monks, and actually assuming the yellow robe. He does not appear to have abdicated at the same time, for edicts issued six years later were still published by his authority and with his sanction; it is probable, however, that he withdrew from active participation in secular affairs, and left the administration in the hands of his ministers and the heir apparent or crown prince. But this supposition is not necessary to explain his conduct. His submission to the Ten Precepts, or ascetic rules, binding upon ordained monks, did not inevitably involve his withdrawal from the duties of royalty, and he would have found no difficulty in formally complying with the obligations of mendicancy by a begging tour within the spacious palace precincts.

The case of Asoka is not unique. A perfect parallel is furnished by Chinese history, which records that Hsiao Yen, the first emperor of the Liang dynasty, who was a devout Buddhist, actually adopted the monastic garb on two occasions, in 527 and 529 A.D. A less completely parallel case is supplied by the story of a Jain king of Western India in the twelfth century, who assumed the title of “Lord of the Order,” and at various periods of his reign bound himself by vows of continence and abstinence.

Whatever may have been the exact procedure adopted, there is no doubt that Asoka was formally ordained as a monk, and the fact was so notorious that a thousand years later his statues were still to be seen, vested in monastic garb. The latter years of his reign

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were undoubtedly devoted in a special degree to works of piety, but there is no sufficient reason for believing the legends which depict the emperor in his old age as a dotard devotee incapable of administering the affairs of the empire.

The latest edicts, dated 256 years after the death of Buddha, that is to say, in the year 232 or 231 B.C., must have been published very shortly before the emperor’s death, which is supposed to have occurred at a holy hill near Rajagriha, the ancient capital of Magadha.

Pillar of Asoka at Allahabad

A large body of tradition affirms that a Buddhist church council was held at the capital by the command and under the patronage of Asoka in order to settle the canon of scripture and reform abuses in monastic discipline. Although the legendary details of the constitution and proceedings of the council are clearly unhistorical, the fact of the assembly may be accepted without hesitation. If it had met before the thirty-first year of the reign in which the emperor published the Pillar Edicts, recording his retrospect of the measures taken for the promotion of piety, the council would assuredly have been mentioned in those documents. But they are silent on the subject, and the fair inference is that the council was held

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at a date subsequent to their publication, and after the emperor had assumed the monastic robe.

The one document in the whole series of the Asoka inscriptions which is avowedly Buddhist in explicit terms – the Bhabra Edict – evidently belongs to the same period as the council, and is to be interpreted as the address of the emperor-monk to his brethren of the order.

The extent of the enormous empire governed by Asoka can be ascertained with approximate accuracy. On the northwest, it extended to the Hindu Kush mountains, and included most of the territory now under the rule of the Ameer of Afghanistan, as well as the whole, or a large part, of Baluchistan, and all of Sind. The secluded valleys of Suwat and Bajaur were probably more or less thoroughly controlled by the imperial officers, and the valleys of Kashmir and Nepal were certainly integral parts of the empire. Asoka built a new capital in the vale of Kashmir, named Srinagar, at a short distance from the city which now bears that name.

In the Nepal valley, he replaced the older capital, Manju Patan, by a city named Patan, Lalita Patan, or Lalitpur, which still exists, two and a half miles to the south-east of Kathmandu, the modern capital. Lalita Patan subsequently became the seat of a separate principality, and it retains the special Buddhist stamp impressed upon it by Asoka. His foundation of this city was undertaken as a memorial of the visit which he paid to Nepal in 250 or 249 B.C., when he undertook the

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tour of the holy places. He was accompanied by his daughter Charumati, who adopted a religious life, and remained in Nepal, when her imperial father returned to the plains. She founded a town called Devapatana, in memory of her husband, Devapala Kshatriya, and settled down to the life of a nun at a convent built by her to the north of Pasupatinath, which bears her name to this day. Asoka treated Lalita Patan as a place of great sanctity, erecting in it five great stupas, one in the centre of the town, and four others outside the walls at the cardinal points All these monuments still exist, and differ conspicuously from more recent edifices. Some minor buildings are also attributed to Asoka or his daughter.

Eastwards, the empire comprised the whole of Bengal as far as the mouths of the Ganges, where Tamralipti (generally identified with the modern Tamluk) was the principal port. The strip of coast to the north of the Godavari River, known as Kalinga, was annexed in 261 B.C. Farther south, the Andhra kingdom, between the Godavari and the Krishna (Kistna), appears to have been treated as a protected state, administered by its own rajas.

On the southeast, the Palar River, the northern frontier of the Tamil race, may be regarded as the limit of the imperial jurisdiction. The Tamil states extending to the extremity of the peninsula, and known as the Chola and Pandya kingdoms, were certainly independent, as were the Keralaputra and Satiyaputra states on the south-western, or Malabar, coast. The southern

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frontier of the empire must nearly have coincided with the thirteenth degree of north latitude, or it may be described approximately as a line drawn from the mouth of the Palar River near Sadras on the eastern coast (N. lat. 12° 13′ 15′′) through Bangalore (N. lat. 12° 58′) to the river Chandragiri on the western coast (N. lat. 13° 15′).

The wilder tribes on the north-western frontier and in the jungle tracts of the Vindhya Mountains separating Northern from Southern India seem to have enjoyed a limited autonomy under the suzerainty of the paramount power. The empire comprised, therefore, in modern terminology, Afghanistan south of the Hindu Kush, Baluchistan, Sind, the valley of Kashmir, Nepal, the lower Himalaya, and the whole of India proper, except the southern extremity.

The central regions seem to have been governed directly from Pataliputra under the king’s personal supervision. The outlying provinces were administered by members of the royal family, holding the rank of viceroys, of whom, apparently, there were four. The ruler of the northwest was stationed at Taxila, and his jurisdiction may be assumed to have included the Panjab, Sind, the countries beyond the Indus, and Kashmir. The eastern territories, including the conquered kingdom of Kalinga, were governed by a viceroy stationed at Tosali, the exact position of which has not been ascertained. The western provinces of Malwa, Guzerat, and Kathiawar were under the government of a prince, whose headquarters were at the ancient city of Ujjain,

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and the southern provinces, beyond the Narmada, were ruled by the fourth viceroy.

Asoka was a great builder, and so deep was the impression made on the popular imagination by the extent and magnificence of his architectural works that legend credited him with the erection of eighty-four thousand stupas, or sacred cupolas, within the space of

Bharahat sculpture of a Buddhist stupa.

(After Cunningham.)

three years. When Fa-hien, the first Chinese pilgrim, visited Pataliputra, the capital, at the beginning of the fifth century A.D., in the reign of Chandragupta Vikramaditya, the palace of Asoka was still standing, and was deemed to have been wrought by supernatural agency.

“The royal palace and halls in the midst of the city, which exist now as of old, were all made by the spirits

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which he employed, and which piled up the stones, reared the walls and gates, and executed the elegant carving and inlaid sculpture work in a way which no human hands of this world could accomplish.”

These stately buildings have all vanished, and their remains lie buried for the most part beyond hope of recovery deep below the silt of the Ganges and Son Rivers, overlaid by the East Indian railway, the city of Patna, and the civil station of Bankipur. Slight and desultory excavations have revealed enough to attest the substantial truth of the pilgrim’s enthusiastic description, and I have myself seen two huge and finely carved sandstone capitals – one with the acanthus-leaf ornament – dug up near Bankipur.

The numerous and magnificent monasteries founded by Asoka have shared the fate of his palaces, and are ruined beyond recognition. The only buildings of the Asokan period which have escaped destruction and “remain in a state of tolerable preservation are those forming the celebrated group of stupas, or cupolas, at and near Sanchi, in Central India, not very far from Ujjain, where Asoka held court as viceroy of the west before his accession to the throne. The elaborately carved gateways of the railing round the principal monument, which have been so often described and figured, may have been constructed to the order of the great Maurya, and are certainly not much later than his time.

The massive monolithic sandstone pillars, inscribed and uninscribed, which Asoka erected in large numbers throughout the home provinces of the empire,

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some of which are fifty feet in height and about fifty tons in weight, are not only worthy monuments of his magnificence, but also of the highest interest as the earliest known examples of the Indian stone-cutter’s art in architectural forms. The style is Persian rather than Greek, and the mechanical execution is perfect.

The caves, with highly polished walls, excavated in the intensely hard quartzose gneiss of the Barabar hills near Gaya by order of Asoka, for the use of the Ajivika ascetics, a penitential order closely connected with the Jains, recall Egyptian work by the mastery displayed over intractable material.

Bas-relief on Left-hand Pillar, Northern Gateway of the Rail at Sandal.

The most interesting monuments of Asoka are his famous inscriptions, more than thirty in number, incised upon rocks, boulders, cave walls, and pillars, which supply the only safe foundation for the history of his reign, and must be briefly described before I can enter upon the discussion of his doctrine and policy. The more important documents, which expound fully both his principles of government and his system of practical ethics, supply many interesting autobiographical details. The shorter documents include dedications, brief commemorative

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records, and other matter; but all, even the most concise, have interest and value.

The area covered by the inscriptions comprises nearly the whole of India, and extends from the Himalaya to Mysore, and from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea.

The documents are all written in various forms of Prakrit, that is to say, vernacular dialects closely allied both to literary Sanskrit and to the Pali of the Ceylonese Buddhist books, but not identical with either. They were, therefore, obviously intended to be read and understood by the public generally, and their existence presupposes a fairly general knowledge of the art of writing. The inscriptions designed for public instruction were placed either in suitable positions on high-roads or at frequented places of pilgrimage where their contents were ensured the greatest possible publicity.

Two recensions of the Fourteen Rock Edicts, inscribed on rocks at places near the north-western frontier of India, were executed in the script locally current, now generally known to scholars as the Kharoshthi, which is a modified form of an ancient Aramaic alphabet, written from right to left, introduced into the Panjab during the period of Persian domination in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. All the other inscriptions are incised in one or other variety of the early Brahmi alphabet, from which the Devanagari and other forms of the modern script in Northern and Western India have been evolved, and which is read from left to right.

The inscriptions readily fall into eight classes, which

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may be arranged in approximate chronological order as follows: –

1. The Fourteen Rock Edicts, in seven recensions, dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth regnal years, as reckoned from the coronation, corresponding to 257 and 256 B.C.

2. The two Kalinga Edicts, issued probably in 256 B.C., and concerned only with the newly conquered province.

3. The three dedicatory Cave Inscriptions at Barabar near Gaya, 257 and 250 B.C.

4. The two Tarai Pillar Inscriptions, 249 B.C.

5. The Seven Pillar Edicts, in six recensions, 243 and 242 B.C.

6. The Supplementary Pillar Edicts, about 240 B.C.

7. The Minor Rock Edicts, dated in the year 256 after the death of Buddha, 232 or 231 B.C.

8. The Bhabra Edict, of about the same date as the Minor Rock Edicts.

The Fourteen Rock Edicts contain an exposition of Asoka’s principles of government and ethical system, each edict being devoted to a special subject. The different recensions vary considerably, and some do not include all the fourteen edicts. The whole series, in all its varieties, is confined to remote frontier provinces, which were under the government of viceroys. The emperor evidently was of opinion that in the home provinces, under his immediate control, it was not necessary to engrave his instructions on the rocks, as other and more convenient methods of publication were available. But many years later he perpetuated his revised code in the home provinces also by incising it upon several of the monolithic monumental pillars which it was his pleasure to erect in numerous localities.

The two Kalinga Edicts are special supplements to

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the series of the Fourteen Rock Edicts, intended to fix the principles on which the administration of the newly conquered province and the wild tribes dwelling on its borders should be conducted. They were substituted for certain edicts (Nos. 11, 12, 13) of the regular series, which were omitted from the Kalinga recension, as being unsuitable for local promulgation.

The three Cave Inscriptions at Barabar in the Gaya District are merely brief dedications of costly cave-dwellings for the use of a monastic sect known as Ajivika, the members of which went about naked and were noted for ascetic practices of the most rigorous kind These records are chiefly of interest as a decisive proof that Asoka was sincere in his solemn declaration that he honoured all sects, for the Ajivikas had little or nothing in common with the Buddhists and were intimately connected with the Jains.

The two Tarai Pillar Inscriptions, although extremely brief, are of much interest for many reasons, one of which is that they prove beyond question the truth of the literary tradition that Asoka performed a solemn pilgrimage to the sacred spots of the Buddhist Holy Land. The Rummindei, or Padaria, inscription, which is in absolutely perfect preservation, has the great merit of determining, beyond the possibility of doubt, the exact position of the famous Lumbini Garden, where, according to the legend, Gautama Buddha first saw the light. This determination either solves, or supplies the key to, a multitude of problems. The companion record at Nigliva, which is less perfectly preserved,

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gives the unexpected and interesting information that Asoka’s devotion was not confined to Gautama Buddha, but included in its catholic embrace his predecessors, the “former Buddhas.”

The Seven Pillar Edicts, issued in their complete form in the year 242 B.C., when Asoka had reigned for thirty years and was nearing the close of his career of activity in worldly affairs, must be read along with the Fourteen Rock Edicts, to which they refer, and of which they may be considered an appendix. The principles enunciated in the earlier instructions are re-iterated and emphasized in the later; the regulations enforcing the sanctity of animal life are amplified and codified; and the series closes with the most valuable of all the documents, Pillar Edict No. 7, preserved on one monument only, which recounts in orderly fashion the measures adopted by the emperor in the course of his long reign to promote “the growth of piety.”

The Supplementary Pillar Edicts are brief dedicatory records, more curious than important.

The Minor Rock Edicts, on the other hand, although of small bulk, are in some respects the most interesting of the inscriptions, and until recently presented a puzzling enigma, or series of enigmas. It now seems to be fairly well established that these Minor Rock Edicts were published thirty-eight complete years after Asoka’s coronation, or about forty-one years after his accession, and that they must therefore be referred either to the year 232 or 231 B.C., the last year of the aged emperor’s life. They are dated expressly 256 years

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after the death of Buddha, and thus fix that event as having occurred in or about the year 487 B.C., according to the belief current at the court of Pataliputra, only two centuries and a half after its occurrence. When thus interpreted, these brief documents gain intense interest as the valedictory address of the dying emperor-monk to the people whom he loved to regard as his children.

The extremely curious Bhabra Edict, which forms a class by itself, should be referred apparently to the same period as the Minor Rock Edicts, that is to say, to the closing years of Asoka’s life, when, although still retaining his imperial dignity, he had assumed the monastic robe and rule, and had abandoned the active direction of worldly affairs to others. This document, recorded, close to a recension of one of the Minor Rock Edicts, at a lonely monastery in the Rajputana hills, is an address by Asoka, as King of Magadha, to the Buddhist monastic order generally, directing the attention of monks and nuns, as well as of the laity, male and female, to seven passages of scripture deemed by the royal judgment to be specially edifying. But, while earnestly recommending devout meditation upon and profound study of these particular texts, the princely preacher is careful to add the explanation that “all that has been said by the Venerable Buddha has been well said,” whereas the selection of texts is merely the work of, the king’s individual judgment. The importance of this edict in the history of Buddhism cannot be easily overrated.

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The rank growth of legend which has clustered round the name of Asoka bears eloquent testimony to the commanding influence of his personality. In the Buddhist world his fame is as great as that of Charlemagne in medieval Europe, and the tangle of mythological legend which obscures the genuine history of Asoka may be compared in mass with that which drapes the figures of Alexander, Arthur, and Charlemagne. The Asoka legend is not all either fiction or myth, and includes some genuine historical traditions, but it is no better suited to serve as the foundation of sober history than the stories of the Morte d’Arthur or Pseudo-Kallisthenes are adapted to form the bases of chronicles of the doings of the British champion or the Macedonian conqueror. This obvious canon of criticism has been forgotten by most writers upon the Maurya period, who have begun at the wrong end with the late legends, instead of at the right end with the contemporary testimony found in the various edicts of the great king himself.

The legends have reached us in two main streams, the Ceylonese and the North Indian. The accident that the Ceylonese varieties of the stories happen to be recorded in books which assume the form of chronicles with a detailed chronology, and have been known to European readers for seventy years, has given to the southern tales an illusory air of authenticity. The earliest of the Ceylonese chronicles, the Dipavamsa, which was probably compiled late in the fourth century A.D., is some six centuries posterior to the death of Asoka,

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and has little claim to be regarded as a first-rate authority.

The North Indian legends are at least as old, but, being recorded in fragments scattered through many books, Indian, Nepalese, Chinese, and Tibetan, have received scant consideration. All legendary material must of course be used with extreme caution, and only as a supplement to authentic data, but a moment’s consideration will show that legends preserved in Northern India, the seat of Asoka’s imperial power, are more likely to transmit genuine tradition than those which reached the distant island of Ceylon in translations brought nobody knows how, when, or whence, and subsequently largely modified by local influences. This presumption is verified when the two groups of legends are compared, and it then clearly appears that, in certain matters of importance in which they differ, the Northern version is distinctly the more credible.

Assyrian honeysuckle ornament from capital of Lat, at Allahabad

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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