Ashoka's Conversion and Buddhist Missions
Ashoka conquered Kalinga, was appalled by what he had done, and spent the rest of his reign publishing his remorse on rocks. He came to the throne of the Mauryan empire about 268 BC after a disputed succession, and the war in Kalinga on the east coast some eight years later is described in his own thirteenth rock edict: 100,000 killed, 150,000 deported, and many times that number dead afterwards. The edict says that the Beloved of the Gods felt remorse, that the slaughter and separation of a conquered people is grievous, and that he now considers conquest by dharma to be the only true conquest. An emperor publishing an admission of that kind has no parallel in the ancient world. What followed was a programme rather than a conversion of policy alone. The edicts, carved on rocks and on polished sandstone pillars across the subcontinent in local scripts and languages, instruct officials to be impartial, forbid unnecessary animal slaughter, order the planting of shade trees and the digging of wells along roads, provide medical treatment for people and animals, and enjoin respect for all sects. He sent missions to Sri Lanka, where his son and daughter are credited with establishing Buddhism, and to the Hellenistic kings by name — Antiochus, Ptolemy, Antigonus, Magas and Alexander. He did not disband the army or free the Kalinga captives. The pillar capital at Sarnath is the emblem of the Republic of India. The edicts were unreadable for two thousand years. The Brahmi script was deciphered by James Prinsep in 1837, and a king who had been a name in Buddhist legend turned out to have left the earliest datable body of Indian writing in his own words. The missions to Sri Lanka were the ones that took. Theravada Buddhism established there became the form that spread later to Burma, Siam and Cambodia, and the chronicle tradition of the island preserves a dynastic history that Indian sources do not. The edicts also say a good deal about how a large ancient state actually worked. They are addressed to officials as much as to subjects, they repeat instructions in the expectation that they will be ignored, and they order the texts to be read aloud at fixed intervals to people who could not read them. The empire came apart within fifty years of his death in about 232 BC, and the last Mauryan was assassinated by his own commander in 185 BC.
- Year: 268 BCE
- Category: Political
