Ashoka the Great

Born: 304 B.C.E Died: 232 B.C.E Reign: 268- 232 B.C.E

Background: Ashoka’s story starts with his grandfather Chandragupta Maurya. Chandragupta Maurya was the founder of the Mauryan Empire who conquered the Nanda Empire and founded the Mauryan Empire with the capital being in Patilaputra. He also took back the parts of Northwest India that had been conquered by Alexander the Great. His new Empire stretched from Afghanistan to Bangladesh and down to central India. However, toward the end of his life he abdicated the throne in favor of his son Bindusara. Bindusara was a hard expansionist who rapidly pushed into Southern India. Ashoka’s exact birthday is disputed but he according to ancient sources he was born sometime around 304 B.C.E. Ashoka’s half-brother, Sushima, was the oldest and completely incompetent. So, Bindusara got 500 ministers to support Ashoka became King. When Ashoka became Emperor the first thing, he did was to cement his control. So, he killed all his brothers to avoid civil war.

Expansion: By the time Ashoka came to power, the Mauryan Empire stretched from Bangladesh to Afghanistan to Southern India. But there was a small Kingdom called Kalinga which is the modern Indian state of Odisha that was becoming a nuisance. Ashoka marshalled his forces and attacked. The Kalinga Royal Army was decimated and the Mauryan army achieved a swift and brutal victory. It is here where the famous story of Ashoka, when he was walking through the village that had been destroyed by the onslaught of Ashoka’s army and saw a boy that had been killed by six arrows. Pillars, Edicts, Buddhism and a Golden Age After witnessing the violence and horrors of war, Ashoka began to look for new answers and he found them in the new faith of Buddhism. He did this out of the pure remorse that he felt because of the bloodshed he saw in Kalinga. This was also the time where he ushered in a golden age for scientific and mathematical advancements. For example, under Ashoka, scholars had developed units of measurements for different purposes such as for building moats, houses, business and weight. Then we have the Pillars and the edicts written on them. The pillars themselves are constructed from 2 different types of stone put together by master craftsmen. The pillars had a lotus and a lion on top. The lotus represents Buddhism itself and the Lion represents Shakya, the Lion clan in which Siddhartha Gautama was born into. Each pillar also has an edict engraved into them which infuse the concepts of Hinduism and Buddhism such as Dharma, the concept that each person has a duty to fulfil, Karma, the idea that the universe rewards good and punishes evil and the concept of Samsara, which means that rebirth is a painful idea that is caused by desire. According to this article on Khan Academy, it states " The edicts, through their strategic placement and couched in the Buddhist dharma, serve to underscore Ashoka’s administrative role and as a tolerant leader". Finally, after a 36-year reign, Ashoka died. After Ashoka’s death, Buddhism declined in India largely thanks to Hinduism being a flexible religion which managed to envelop Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu. Legacy: Ashoka’s legacy has been fused with the history of Buddhism because of his conversion. He is also remembered for being a visionary who envisioned a unified Indian subcontinent and was the first to pioneer a pan-Indian empire that stretched from Iran and Afghanistan in the West to Bangladesh in the East and from the Himalayas in the north to the jungles in Southern India. However, after Ashoka died, his successor could not maintain the Empire and it soon collapsed due to different warring factions and it would take the Gupta Empire to recreate what the Mauryans had.

Khan Academy Article: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-asia/south- asia/x97ec695a:art-magadha/a/the-pillars-of-ashoka