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- No historical account survives of Ashoka's campaign at Taxila; it is accepted as historical fact based on suggestions from inscriptions and place names but the details are unknown.
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Ashoka was the third emperor of the Mauryan dynasty, grandson of its founder Chandragupta and son of the second emperor, Bindusara. Upon Bindusara’s death, Ashoka and his brothers engaged in a war of succession, and Ashoka emerged victorious after several years of conflict.
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- Overview
- Tending to earthly needs
- Sarnath, pillar of faith
- Buddhism
Upset with his violent conquests that killed hundreds of thousands, the Indian king Ashoka embraced Buddhism and treated his subjects humanely.
Emperor Ashoka is credited with remaking the Mauyran Dynasty from a war machine into a society of tolerance and nonviolence, based on Buddhism.
Chandragupta Maurya’s grandson Ashoka (Aśoka) (ca 304–233 B.C.) took the Mauryan Empire to its greatest geographical extent and its full height of power. Yet his remarkable transformation of the kingdom came not through the intense violence that marked his early reign. Instead, it resulted from his embrace of Buddhism and the messages of tolerance and nonviolence that he spread throughout the sprawling empire.
Eight years after seizing power around 270 B.C., Ashoka led a military campaign to conquer Kalinga, a coastal kingdom in east-central India. The victory left him with a larger domain than that of any of his predecessors. Accounts claim between 100,000 and 300,000 lives were lost during the conquest.
That human toll took a tremendous emotional toll on Ashoka. He wrote that he was “deeply pained by the killing, dying, and deportation that take place when an unconquered country is conquered.” Thereafter, Ashoka renounced military conquest and other forms of violence, including cruelty to animals. He became a patron of Buddhism, supporting the rise of the doctrine across India. He reportedly dispatched emissaries to several countries, including Syria and Greece, and he sent his own children as missionaries to Sri Lanka.
Ashoka shared his new outlook on life through edicts carved into stones and pillars located around the country at pilgrimage sites and along busy trade routes. The edicts are considered among the first examples of writing in Indian history. They were not carved in Sanskrit—the official state language—but in local dialects, so that the messages could be widely understood. For example, an edict near modern-day Kandahar in Afghanistan, an area that had been under Alexander the Great’s control for a period of time, is written in Greek and Aramaic.
In addition to his edicts, Ashoka built stupas, monasteries, and other religious structures at noteworthy Buddhist sites, such as Sarnath. He was not an unworldly ruler, however. He efficiently managed a centralized government from the Mauryan capital at Pataliputra. A large bureaucracy collected taxes. Inspectors reported back to the emperor. Irrigation expanded agriculture. Familiar hallmarks of ancient empires, excellent roads were built connecting key trading and political centers; Ashoka ordered that the roads have shade trees, wells, and inns.
After his death, Ashoka’s merciful style of governance waned along with the Mauryan Empire itself. His reign slipped into the realm of legend, until archaeologists translated his edicts two millennia later. In their time, those edicts helped unify a vast empire through their shared messages of virtue, and they propelled the expansion of Buddhism throughout India.
Ashoka’s most famous pillar was erected at Sarnath, in the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India. The site is revered among Buddhist pilgrims as the spot where the Buddha gave his first sermon and shared his Four Noble Truths.
The pillar’s exquisitely carved capital, more than seven feet tall, is divided into three sections. Its base is a lotus flower, a Buddhist symbol. A cylindrical abacus features carvings of a horse, a lion, a bull, and an elephant at the compass points of the cardinal directions, with dharma wheels evenly spaced in between. At the top stand four powerful lions, also facing the four cardinal directions and thought to represent Ashoka’s power over all the land. The capital was adopted as the national emblem of India in 1950 and is depicted on several of the country’s coins and banknotes.
Founded between the sixth and early fourth century B.C. by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha or “enlightened one,” Buddhism soon spread through India and much of Asia. Buddha introduced the concept of peace through inner discipline. His meditations told him that suffering came from desire for sensory pleasures. Therefore, he laid out an Eightfold Path to inner holiness: right view, right aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right-mindedness, and right concentration.
He taught that through meditation, discussion, humility, and denial of a self, a person could achieve a perfect, peaceful state known as nirvana. As years passed, increasing numbers of Buddhist monks fanned out across Asia, acting as missionaries to promote the faith.
This text is an excerpt from the National Geographic special issue The Most Influential Figures of Ancient History.
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Jun 24, 2020 · Ashoka the Great (r. 268-232 BCE) was the third king of the Mauryan Empire (322-185 BCE) best known for his renunciation of war, development of the concept of dhamma (pious social conduct), and promotion of Buddhism as well as his effective reign of a nearly pan -Indian political entity.
- Joshua J. Mark
Ashoka's existence as a historical emperor had almost been forgotten, but since the decipherment in the 19th century of sources written in Brahmi script, Ashoka holds a reputation as one of the greatest Indian emperors.
Oct 21, 2015 · Ashoka came to meet Samudra who chastised him and instructed the emperor to build 84,000 stupas in accordance with the Buddha’s prophecy and to guarantee the security of all beings. Ashoka repented, tore down the torture chamber, executed his executioner, and obeyed Samudra’s commands.
- Dhwty
Jun 6, 2019 · Ashoka the Great (c. 304–232 BCE) was the emperor of India's Maurya Dynasty from 268 to 232 BCE and is remembered for his remarkable conversion to nonviolence and his merciful reign.
Ashoka was the third ruler of the Maurya Dynasty and ruled almost the entire Indian subcontinent from c. 268 to 232 BCE. Let's have a look at his life history, empire, rule, administration and Dhamma.
