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Ashoka the Great

This article is about Ashoka, the emperor. For alternate usages: see Ashoka (disambiguation).

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Ashoka the Great (also Asoka, Aśoka; reigned 273 BC - 232 BC) was the ruler of the Mauryan empire from 269 to 232 B.C. A convert to Buddhism, Ashoka reigned over most of the Indian subcontinent, from present day Afghanistan to Bengal and as far south as Mysore.

The name "Ashoka" translates into 'without sorrow' in Sanskrit (a – without, shoka – sorrow). Asoka was the first ruler of ancient Bharata (India), after the famed Mahabharata rulers, to unify such a vast territory under his empire, which in retrospect exceeds the boundaries of the present-day republic of India.

Early life

As goes the folklore in India, Ashoka was the son of Bindusara by a relatively lower ranked Queen known as Dharma. Ashoka had just one younger sibling, Vitthashoka. Bindusara had 100 sons before Ashoka, but because of his exemplary intellect and warrior skills, he was the favourite of his grandfather Chandragupta Maurya. As the legend goes, when Chandragupta Maurya left his empire for an ascetic living, he threw his sword away. Ashoka found the sword and kept it.

Rise to power

As he grew up, Ashoka went on to become an impeccable warrior general and a shrewd statesman. He came to command many regiments of the Mauryan army and instilled awe and respect throughout the Mauryan empire. His growing popularity across the empire made his elder brothers wary of his chances of being favoured by Bindusara to become the next emperor. The eldest of them, Prince Susima, heir to the throne by the Hindu code of law, conspired and persuaded Bindusara to send Ashoka to quell an uprising in the city of Taxila in the north-west province of Sindh, of which Prince Susima was the governor. This particular area was inhabited by an Indo-Greek population. It was a highly volatile place because of the war-like tribes residing there and the mismanagement by Susima led to the formation of different militias causing unrest. Ashoka complied and left for the troubled area. As news of Ashoka's visit with his army trickled in, the leader of the revolting militias of the province stood at the gates of the city to welcome the incoming aggressor, and the uprising ended without a fight. (The province revolted once more during the rule of Ashoka, but this time the uprising was crushed with an iron hand.)

With his stupendous success, he received a hero's welcome back home. This made his step-brothers more wary of his intentions of becoming the emperor, as Ashoka was growing stronger with each passing day. Prince Susima now told his father Bindusara that Ashoka was trying to take his throne. Such incitements made Bindusara send Ashoka into exile, out of the bounds of the Mauryan empire. He went into Kalinga and stayed incognito there. There he met a fisherwoman named Karubaki, with whom he fell in love; recently found inscriptions indicate that she went on to become his second or third wife.

Meanwhile, there was again a violent uprising in Ujjain and no one was better suited to quell it than Ashoka. Emperor Bindusara thus summoned Ashoka back after an exile of two years. Ashoka went into Ujjain and in the ensuing battle was injured, but his generals quelled the uprising. Ashoka was treated in hiding so that loyalists of the Susima group could not harm him. He was treated by Buddhist monks and ladies. This is where he first learned the teachings of Buddha, and it is also where he met his first wife Devi, who was his personal nurse. After recovering, he married her. It was quite unacceptable to Bindusara that one of his sons should marry a Buddhist, so he did not allow Ashoka to stay in Pataliputra, but instead sent him back to Ujjain and made him the governor of Ujjain.

Distanced from his plotting brothers, the following year passed quite peacefully for him and Devi was about to deliver his first child. In the meanwhile, Emperor Bindusara died. As the news of the unborn heir to the throne spread, Prince Susima planned the execution of the unborn child; however, the assassin who came to kill Devi and her child killed his mother instead. As the folklore goes, in a fit of rage, Prince Ashoka attacked Pataliputra (modern day Patna), and beheaded all his brothers, including Susima, and threw their bodies in a well in Pataliputra. At that stage of his life, many called him Chanda Ashoka meaning murderer and heartless Ashoka.

In the next eight years of his life, he went on conquering lands and building his empire, expanding it from the present-day boundaries of Bangladesh and the state of Assam in India in the east to the territory of present-day Iran and Afghanistan in the west; from the Palmir Knots in the north to the almost peninsular part of southern India.

Conquest of Kalinga

While the early part of Ashoka's reign was apparently quite bloodthirsty, he became a follower of the Buddha's teaching after his conquest of Kalinga, on the east coast of India in the present-day state of Orissa. Kalinga was a state that prided itself on its sovereignty and democracy; with its monarchical cum parliamentary democracy, it was quite an exception in ancient Bharata, as there existed the concept of Rajdharma, meaning the duty of the rulers, which was intrinsically entwined with the concept of bravery and Kshatriya dharma.

The pretext for the start of the Kalinga War (265 or 263 BCE) is uncertain. The Vedas say that one of Susima's brothers had fled to Kalinga and found official refuge there. This enraged Ashoka immensely. He was advised by his ministers to attack Kalinga for this act of treachery. Ashoka then asked Kalinga's royalty to submit before his supremacy. When they defied this diktat, Ashoka sent one of his generals to Kalinga to make them submit.

The general and his forces were, however, completely routed through the skilled tact of Kalinga's commander-in-chief. Ashoka, baffled at this defeat, attacked with the greatest invasion ever recorded until then, with 1 million infantry and 200,000 mounted cavalry. Kalinga could not match Ashoka's numerical strength, so both men and women and everybody from peasants to craftsmen joined in the fight. But they were no match for Ashoka's brutal strength. The whole of Kalinga was plundered and destroyed: the Vedas say that at least 600,000 men were killed on the Kalinga side and 10,000 from Ashoka's army; thousands of men and women were taken as slaves.

Conversion to Buddhism

As the legend goes, one day after the war was over, Ashoka ventured out to roam the city and all he could see were burnt houses and scattered corpses. This sight made him sick and he cried the famous quote, "What have I done?" The brutality of the conquest led him to adopt Buddhism and he used his position to propagate the relatively new philosophy to new heights, as far as ancient Rome and Egypt. He made Vibhajyavada Buddhism his state religion around 260 BCE. He propagated the Vibhajyavada school of Buddhism and preached it within his domain and worldwide from about 250 BCE.

Prominent in this cause were his son Venerable Mahinda and daughter Sanghamitta, who established Buddhism in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He built thousands of Stupas and Viharas for Buddhist followers. During the remaining portion of Ashoka's reign, he pursued an official policy of nonviolence, ahimsa. He is acclaimed for constructing hospitals for animals and renovating major roads throughout India. After this transformation of self, Ashoka came to be known as Dhammashoka (Sanskrit), meaning Ashoka, the follower of Dharma. Some critics say that Ashoka was afraid of more wars, but among his neighbors, including the Seleucid Empire and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom established by Diodotus I, none could match his strength. He was a contemporary of both Antiochus I Soter and his successor Antiochus II Theos of the Seleucid dynasty as well as Diodotus I and his son Diodotus II of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom. If his inscriptions and edicts are well studied, one finds that he was familiar with the Hellenic world but never in awe of it. His edicts, which talk of friendly relations, give the names of both Antiochus of the Seleucid empire and Ptolemy III of Egypt. But the fame of the Mauryan empire was widespread from the time that Ashoka's grandfather Chandragupta Maurya defeated Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Seleucid Dynasty.

The source of much of our knowledge of Ashoka is the many inscriptions he had carved on pillars and rocks throughout the empire. Emperor Ashoka is known as Piyadasi (in Pali) or Priyadarshi (in Sanskrit) meaning "good looking" or "favoured by the gods with good blessing". All his inscriptions have the imperial touch and show compassionate loving; he addressed his people as his "children". These inscriptions promoted Buddhist morality and encouraged nonviolence and adherence to Dharma (duty or proper behavior), and they talk of his fame and conquered lands as well as the neighbouring kingdoms holding up his might. One also gets some primary information about the Kalinga War and Ashoka's allies plus some useful knowlege on the civil admisistration. The Ashoka Pillar at Sarnath is the most popular of the relics left by Ashoka. Made of sandstone, this pillar records the visit of the emperor to Sarnath, in the 3rd century BC. It has a four-lion capital (four lions standing back to back) which was adopted as the emblem of the modern Indian republic. The lion symbolises both Ashoka's imperial rule and the kingship of the Buddha.

See also: Edicts of Ashoka

Death and legacy

Emperor Ashoka ruled for an estimated 41 years, and after his death, the Maurya dynasty lasted just 50 more years. Ashoka had many wives and children, but their names are lost in time. Mahinda and Sanghamitta were twins borne by his first wife, Devi. He had entrusted to them the job of making his state religion, Buddhism, more popular across the known and the unknown world. So they were naturally not the ones handling state affairs after him. Some rare records speak of a successor of Ashoka named Kunal, who was his son from his last wife. But his rule did not last long after Ashoka's death. In the year 185 BCE, about 50 years after Ashoka's death, the last Mauryan ruler, Brhadrata, was brutally murdered by the then commander-in-chief of the Mauryan armed forces, Pusyamitra Sunga, while he was taking the Guard of Honour of his forces. Pusyamitra Sunga founded the Sunga dynasty (185-78 BCE) and ruled just a fragmented part of the Mauryan Empire.

Not until some 2000 years later under Akbar the Great and his grandson Aurangzeb would as large a portion of the subcontinent as that ruled by Ashoka again be united under a single ruler. But ultimately, it was the British Imperial India that brought the fragmented subcontinent under such a large single political unit, which paved the way for the emergence of the Modern Bharata with Ashoka's emblem inspiring leadership and compassion.

See also: List of people known as The Great

Preceded by: Bindusara

Mauryan ruler

Succeeded by: Dasaratha