Ashoka's Conversion and Buddhist Missions
In the aftermath of the Kalinga War of c. 261 BCE — in which his own rock edicts recorded that some 100,000 were killed and 150,000 deported — the Mauryan emperor Ashoka underwent a documented transformation. He converted to Buddhism, adopted a policy he called dhamma (often rendered as righteous governance or moral law), and spent the remainder of his reign pursuing that policy through an empire stretching from Afghanistan to the Bay of Bengal. Ashoka's dhamma was not simply Buddhism imposed as state religion; it was a syncretic ethical code emphasising non-violence, tolerance of all religious sects, care for animals and trees, welfare works (rest houses, wells, hospital gardens along roads), and the subordination of conquest by force to what he called dhammavijaya — conquest by righteousness. The Rock Edicts, inscribed on polished sandstone in Brahmi and Kharoshthi scripts (and in Greek and Aramaic in the northwestern provinces near the Hellenistic kingdoms), are the first large-scale political inscriptions in Indian history and one of the earliest surviving examples of a ruler directly addressing his subjects in the vernacular. The missionary programme was the most consequential long-term outcome. Ashoka sent his son Mahinda and daughter Sanghamitta to Sri Lanka, where they established Theravada Buddhism as the island's dominant religion — a position it still holds. He sent missions west into the Hellenistic kingdoms of Antiochus II of Syria, Ptolemy II of Egypt, Antigonus of Macedon, Magas of Cyrene, and Alexander of Epirus; the Greek missions appear to have had little lasting impact, but the Central Asian missions helped Buddhism penetrate the Silk Road trade networks along which it would eventually reach China, Korea, and Japan. Ashoka also sponsored the Third Buddhist Council at Pataliputra around 250 BCE, which standardised the Pali canon and resolved doctrinal disputes that had accumulated in the century after the Buddha's death. The construction of stupas over relics of the Buddha across the empire created a physical Buddhist landscape that persisted long after the Maurya dynasty collapsed around 185 BCE.
- Year: 268 BCE
- Category: Political
