Ashoka
Ashoka ruled one of the largest empires the Indian subcontinent had ever seen, then nearly vanished from memory. For centuries his name survived mostly in Buddhist legends. His own words sat in plain view, carved into rock and stone pillars across his territory, but no one could read them. The script was Brahmi, and it had been forgotten.
In the 19th century, a scholar named James Prinsep deciphered that script. Suddenly the inscriptions could speak again. A king who had been a half-remembered figure of religious folklore became a documented historical emperor. He now holds a reputation as one of the greatest Indian rulers.
His empire reached from present-day Afghanistan in the west to present-day Bangladesh in the east, governed from a capital at Pataliputra. He was the third ruler of the Mauryan dynasty, Emperor of Magadha from around 268 BCE until his death. Yet the question that runs through everything written about him is harder than geography. Who was he really? The sources that describe him contradict one another constantly. Some call him cruel, some call him saintly, and many were composed by authors with reasons to shape the story. The modern Republic of India placed the lions from one of his pillars on its state emblem, and his wheel sits at the center of the national flag. Behind those symbols is a man historians are still trying to reconstruct from fragments that refuse to agree.
Ashoka's inscriptions are the earliest self-representations of imperial power in the Indian subcontinent. That makes them precious and also misleading. They focus almost entirely on dhamma, his idea of righteous conduct, and say little about how the Maurya state or society actually worked. Even on dhamma, they cannot be taken at face value. The American academic John S. Strong suggests it helps to read Ashoka's messages as propaganda by a politician who wanted a favorable image of himself, rather than a record of facts.
Buddhist legends supply much of the rest, and they present him as a great, ideal emperor. These texts were not written in Ashoka's own time. Buddhist authors composed them later, using stories to show their faith's impact on the king. Among modern scholars, opinions range from dismissing the legends as myth to accepting whatever historical portions seem plausible.
The legends survive in a striking spread of languages: Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, Burmese, Khmer, Sinhala, Thai, Lao, and Khotanese. They trace back to two main streams. The North Indian tradition lives in Sanskrit texts such as the Divyavadana and its Ashokavadana, and in Chinese works. The Sri Lankan tradition lives in Pali texts such as the Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa.
The two streams diverge sharply, even when telling the same story. Both describe Ashoka's empress Tishyarakshita having the Bodhi Tree destroyed. In the Ashokavadana, she realizes her mistake and has the tree healed. In the Mahavamsa, she destroys it permanently, but only after a branch has already been transplanted to Sri Lanka. That small difference reveals the agenda. The Mahavamsa glorifies Sri Lanka as the new home of Buddhism, and shapes its facts to fit.
Bindusara, Ashoka's father, hated the boy for his rough and unappealing skin, according to the Ashokavadana. When the king asked the ascetic Pingala-vatsajiva which son was worthy to succeed him, Ashoka was reluctant even to attend the gathering at the Garden of the Golden Pavilion. His mother convinced him to go. The ascetic, examining the princes, privately concluded that Ashoka would be emperor, but refused to say so aloud to avoid angering Bindusara.
Despite the dislike, Bindusara handed Ashoka serious responsibility. The North Indian tradition sends him to suppress a revolt in Takshashila. When he arrived, the citizens welcomed him and explained their rebellion was against the evil ministers, not the emperor. The Sri Lankan tradition tells a different story, making him viceroy of Ujjain, an important administrative and commercial province in central India. The Saru Maru inscription, found in central India, records that he visited the region as a prince.
When Bindusara fell ill, the succession turned violent. The Mahavamsa states that after his father's death, Ashoka had his eldest brother killed and seized the throne. It claims he killed ninety-nine of his half-brothers, sparing only his full brother Tissa. The Dipavamsa raises the count to a hundred. Scholars treat these figures as exaggerations, a way of saying he killed several brothers. Taranatha gives a smaller, blunter number: Ashoka, an illegitimate son, killed six legitimate princes to take power.
The inscriptions complicate the bloodbath. Ashoka's Rock Edict No. 5 mentions officers assigned to the welfare of the families of his brothers and sisters. If brothers survived to have families looked after, the massacre cannot have been total. The likeliest reading is that Ashoka did kill a brother or brothers to win the throne, and that Buddhist authors inflated the violence to make his later transformation look miraculous.
Chandashoka, meaning Ashoka the fierce, was a name the traditions gave him for the years he spent doing evil. Taranatha lays out three names in sequence: Kamashoka for his years of pleasure, Chandashoka for his years of cruelty, and finally Dhammashoka, Ashoka the righteous, after his conversion to Buddhism.
The Ashokavadana piles on the cruelty. When ministers who helped him to power began treating him with contempt, he tested their loyalty with an absurd order to cut down every flower and fruit-bearing tree. When they refused, he personally beheaded five hundred of them. Later, after his concubines damaged an Ashoka tree he was fond of, he burned five hundred of them to death.
Girika, a village boy from Magadha, boasted he could execute the whole of Jambudvipa, and Ashoka hired him. Known afterward as Chandagirika, Girika the fierce, he ran a prison the king had built at Pataliputra. Called Ashoka's Hell, it looked pleasant from the outside while Girika tortured prisoners within. The 5th-century Chinese traveler Faxian claims Ashoka visited the underworld to study torture methods before inventing his own. The 7th-century traveler Xuanzang says he saw a pillar marking the site.
These descriptions look like fabrication. The Sri Lankan texts, unlike the North Indian ones, list no specific evil deeds beyond the killing of brothers. The pattern suggests a literary strategy. By exaggerating Ashoka's wickedness, Buddhist authors could present his conversion as a near-miraculous reversal. The blacker the before, the brighter the after.
One hundred thousand men and animals were killed in action when Ashoka conquered Kalinga, according to his own Major Rock Edict 13. Many times that number perished, and a hundred and fifty thousand were carried away as captives. The conquest came in his eighth regnal year. In his own words, the slaughter, death, and deportation became a matter of profound sorrow and regret. He declared that he now found the suffering of religious people and householders even more deplorable than the deaths.
The edict travels widely and then goes conspicuously silent. It appears at Erragudi, Girnar, Kalsi, Maneshra, Shahbazgarhi, and Kandahar. But in Kalinga itself, the very region he conquered, Rock Edicts 13 and 14 are replaced with two different edicts that mention no remorse at all. He may have judged that confessing regret to the people of Kalinga was politically unwise. Or the whole confession may be, as some put it, more imaginary than real, written to impress those too far away to check.
The sources disagree about the conversion that supposedly followed. Ashoka's inscriptions suggest he was gradually drawn toward Buddhism after the war. The Sri Lankan tradition insists he was already a devoted Buddhist by his eighth year, having converted in his fourth and built monasteries in his fifth through seventh years. That tradition never mentions the Kalinga campaign at all.
The inscriptions themselves argue against any single dramatic moment. In a Minor Rock Edict from his 13th regnal year, five years after Kalinga, Ashoka admits he had been a lay Buddhist for more than two and a half years without making much progress. Only in the past year, he says, had he drawn closer to the sangha and become more ardent. The conversion reads as a slow drift, not a thunderclap on a battlefield.
Eusebeia and qsyt are the words used for Ashoka's Dharma in his Kandahar inscriptions, one Greek and one Aramaic. Both mean something broader than Buddhism. Tellingly, his inscriptions never mention Buddhist doctrines such as the Four Noble Truths or Nirvana. For Ashoka, dhamma meant a moral order of active social concern, religious tolerance, ecological awareness, shared ethical precepts, and the renunciation of war.
The edicts translate this into concrete policy. Pillar Edict IV abolishes the death penalty. Pillar Edict 7 orders banyan trees and mango groves planted, and resthouses and wells built along the roads. Rock Edict 1 restricts killing in the imperial kitchen, limiting it to two peacocks and a deer daily, with even those to stop in future. Rock Edict 2 provides medical facilities for humans and animals alike.
Animal welfare runs deep through his rules. He banned killing of all four-footed creatures that are neither useful nor edible, protected nursing female goats, sheep, and pigs along with their young up to six months, and forbade the castration of animals during certain periods. He abolished imperial hunting. Because of these measures, the Mauryan Empire under Ashoka has been described as one of the very few instances in world history of a government treating its animals as citizens deserving of its protection.
Religious tolerance was equally explicit. In Rock Edict 12, Ashoka honors people of all faiths and tells them not to denigrate other sects but to inform themselves about them. There is no evidence Buddhism was a state religion. He donated the Barabar Caves to the Ajivikas, and his officers, the dhamma-mahamattas, were charged with the welfare of Brahmins, Ajivikas, and Nirgranthas alongside the Buddhist sangha. For all his personal faith, his governing idea of dhamma worked as a moral framework meant to hold a vast and diverse empire together.
Six hundred yojanas away, Ashoka declared, his conquest by dhamma had reached the realm of the Greek king Antiochos. His Major Rock Edict 13 names a remarkable roster of foreign rulers: the four kings Ptolemy, Antigonos, Magas, and Alexander, and to the south the Cholas, the Pandyas, and as far as Tamraparni. He called this conquest by dhamma the best conquest, the only kind he now wished to win.
The Sri Lankan tradition turns this outward push into an organized missionary enterprise. Around 250 BCE, the elder Moggaliputta-Tissa sends out nine Buddhist missions, each of five monks led by an elder. Ashoka's own son Mahinda goes to Sri Lanka. Majjhantika travels to Kashmir and Gandhara, Dhammarakkhita the Greek to western India, and Sona and Uttara to Suvannabhumi, possibly Lower Burma and Thailand. The North Indian tradition mentions none of it.
Archaeology offers partial support. The Vinaya Nidana names five monks said to have gone to the Himalayan region, and three of those names appear inscribed on relic caskets found at Bhilsa near Vidisha. The caskets date to the early 2nd century BCE, and their inscription identifies the monks as belonging to the Himalayan school. Since Mahinda is said to have stayed at Vidisha for a month before leaving for Sri Lanka, the missions may have set out from there.
Scholars still argue over how much credit Ashoka deserves. Etienne Lamotte doubts the dhamma envoys in the inscriptions were Buddhist monks at all, since the destinations and dates do not match the legends. Erich Frauwallner and Richard Gombrich think the missions were historical and that only a resourceful ruler could have funded them. There is a quieter possibility too. Epigraphic evidence suggests Buddhism spread through northwestern India and the Deccan less because of royal missions and more because of merchants, traders, landowners, and artisan guilds who supported Buddhist establishments. The faith may have traveled on trade routes as much as on royal decrees, and the village exempted from land tax in his Lumbini inscription is a reminder that his real footprint is the one still carved in stone.
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Common questions
Who was Ashoka the Great?
Ashoka, also known as Ashoka the Great, was Emperor of Magadha from around 268 BCE until his death and the third ruler of the Mauryan dynasty. His empire stretched from present-day Afghanistan in the west to present-day Bangladesh in the east, with its capital at Pataliputra. He is credited with an important role in spreading Buddhism across ancient Asia.
What was the Kalinga War and how did it change Ashoka?
Ashoka conquered Kalinga during his eighth regnal year, and his Major Rock Edict 13 records that 100,000 men and animals were killed in action and 150,000 were carried away as captives. He expressed profound sorrow and regret over the slaughter. In the years that followed he was gradually drawn toward Buddhism and devoted himself to dhamma, or righteous conduct.
When did Ashoka rule and what dynasty did he belong to?
Ashoka ruled from around 268 BCE until his death, ascending the throne around 269-268 BCE. He was the third ruler of the Mauryan dynasty. His father was the emperor Bindusara and his grandfather was Chandragupta, the founder of the empire.
Why was Ashoka almost forgotten by history?
Ashoka's existence as a historical emperor had almost been forgotten because his inscriptions were written in the Brahmi script, which was forgotten and remained undeciphered for centuries. James Prinsep deciphered the script in the 19th century, after which Ashoka gained a reputation as one of the greatest Indian emperors.
How is Ashoka connected to modern India's national symbols?
The State Emblem of the modern Republic of India is an adaptation of the Lion Capital of Ashoka. Ashoka's wheel, the Ashoka Chakra, is placed at the center of the National Flag of India.
What did Ashoka's concept of dhamma mean?
Ashoka's dhamma referred to a moral order of active social concern, religious tolerance, ecological awareness, shared ethical precepts, and the renunciation of war. His Kandahar inscriptions translate the word using the Greek eusebeia and the Aramaic qsyt, suggesting it meant something broader than Buddhism. His inscriptions never mention Buddhist doctrines such as the Four Noble Truths or Nirvana.
How did Ashoka treat animals and other religions?
Ashoka banned the killing of many animals, protected nursing females and their young, abolished imperial hunting, and provided medical facilities for humans and animals. He also emphasized religious tolerance, honoring people of all faiths and donating the Barabar Caves to the Ajivikas. There is no evidence that Buddhism was a state religion under him.