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Aśoka and the Emergence of a Sinhala Buddhist State in Sri Lanka

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1. Introduction

In the annals of the history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka there is no event of greater significance recorded than the founding of Buddhism as the religion of the state in the third century B.C. It was none other than Emperor Aśoka of India who was responsible for introducing Buddhism to this island. As a result Sri Lanka later became the most important centre of Theravāda Buddhism and came to be known as the dhammadīpa, the Island of Righteousness.

Aśoka, who is often referred to as Dhammāsoka in the chronicles of Sri Lanka, was a firm believer in dharmavijaya, the concept of conquering the world by righteousness without the use of weapons; he was also by his personal actions a perfect example of the Buddhist ideal of a cakravartin, a Universal Monarch. After the disastrous Kalinga war in which thousands of people died, he established a kingdom of righteousness. As a Buddhist upāsaka or faithful lay devotee he gave royal patronage for the spread of the Buddha’s teachings and further helped to transform the Buddha’s Dispensation from a local belief system into a world religion. Though himself a Buddhist he supported other faiths and urged his subjects to respect sincere followers of all religions. The morality that he preached was of a universal nature. He shared his faith and philosophy of life with others living in and outside his vast dominion. For him, the teachings of the Buddha provided salvation from the suffering of the world and the misery of life. He looked after all human beings as his own children (savve manusse pajā mamā) and endeavoured to inculcate in human society conduct that would bring happiness to all. As tradition has it, Sri Lanka benefitted from the friendly association between Aśoka and his contemporary, the Sri Lankan King Devānampiya Tissa, in creating a dhammadīpa, or Island of Righteousness, based on the Buddha’s teachings. The responsibility of safeguarding the doctrine fell upon the Sinhala people. The aim of this essay is to examine the actual role played by Aśka in the introduction of Buddhism to Sri Lanka in the light of evidence available to us from historical and literary sources.

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Aśoka — The Great Upāsaka

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[Extrated from King Asoka and Buddhism Historical & Literary by RICHARD GOMBRICH Edited by Anuradha Seneviratna published by Buddha Dharma Education Association Inc.]

E-mail: bdea@buddhanet.net

Web site: www.buddhanet.net

THE MOST IMPORTANT BUDDHIST LAYMAN in history has been the Emperor Aśoka, who ruled most of India for the middle third of the third century B.C. On the capital of one of the pillars Aśoka erected is beautifully carved a wheel with many spokes. This representation of the wheel of Dhamma which the Buddha set in motion is the symbol chosen to adorn the flag of the modern state of India. The lions on the same capital are on the state seal. Thus India recalls its “righteous ruler.” Aśoka is a towering figure for many other reasons too, but we confine ourselves to his role in Buddhist history. Before Aśoka Buddhism had spread through the northern half of India; but it was his patronage which made it a world religion.

Aśoka was the grandson and second successor of Candragupta, who founded the Mauryan dynasty and empire about 324 B.C. We have very little evidence about the precise extent of what Candragupta conquered and even less about the activities of his son Bindusāra, but Candragupta’s empire may already have covered northern India from coast to coast and probably comprised about two-thirds of the sub-continent. Bindusāra and Aśoka extended it further to the south. The capital was the city of Pāṭaliputta, which had been founded as the new capital of Magadha fairly soon after the Buddha’s death; modern Patna is on the same site. The Mauryan empire was a political unit of a new order of magnitude in India, the first, for example, in which there were speakers of Indo-Aryan languages (derivatives of Sanskrit) so far apart that their dialects must have been mutually incomprehensible. Aśoka’s precise dates are controversial. Eggermont, the scholar who has devoted most attention to the problem, proposes 268–239 B.C.1 For our purposes, there are two Aśokas: the Aśoka known to modern historians through his inscriptions, and the Aśoka of Buddhist tradition. We shall say something about each in turn and then try to reconcile the two.

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1. Aśoka’s Inscriptions

Aśoka left a large number of inscriptions on rocks and pillars. He dictated his edicts to scribes in Pāṭaliputta and had them carved in conspicuous places throughout his vast kingdom. They record a personality and a concept of rule unique not merely in Indian but perhaps in world history. The idea of putting up such inscriptions probably came to Aśoka from the Achaemenid empire in Iran; but whereas Darius has boasted of winning battles and killing people, and considered his enemies products of the forces of evil, Aśoka recorded his revulsion from violence and his wish to spare and care for even animals. He had begun in the usual warlike way, but after a successful campaign in Kalinga (modern Orissa) he had a change of heart. He publicly declared his remorse for the sufferings he had caused in the war and said that henceforth he would conquer only by righteousness (dhamma)2 This remarkable conversion from what every proper Indian king considered his dharma to a  universalistic dhamma of compassion and, ethical propriety presumably coincided with the conversion to Buddhism which Aśoka announced in what may well be the earliest of his edicts. In that edict 3 he says that he first became an upāsaka, a Buddhist lay follower, but did not make much progress for a year; then, however, he “went to” the Saṅgha and made a lot of progress. We cannot be sure just what he meant by “going to” the Saṅgha — the Buddhist tradition that it meant going and living with monks may be an exaggeration — but in any case it clearly involved getting to know more about Buddhism.

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[Extracted from SANCHI: DESIGN OF STUPA NO. 1 - AS AN EXPRESSION OF TRADITIONAL INDIAN ARCHITECTURE By Atsushi Nonogaki,]


DESIGN OF STUPA

It is not an exaggeration to say that the distinctive features seen in Stupa no. 1 (c. 3rd cent. BC ~ c. 1st cent. AD) can be comprehended as the basis of all of Indian architectural spatial expression, making no distinction
022 Special The World of Indian Architecture Aug., 2002, No.1492, Vol.117. JABS between religions, the sacred or the secular. The vedikas or railings surrounding the main body of the stupa are fences used to protect the domain of sacred things like bodhi trees etc., generally called 'chaitya', a universally important spatial compositional element in India. The 'torana' (gateway) is famous for its sculptural relief depicting Buddhist narratives, including the guardian on the side-column or the figure of the nymph on the bracket etc. Its composition survives in the design of the doorway to the garbhagriha of masonry temples later on (especially in north India). Moreover, worshiping the central stupa by moving clock-wise around it
along the circumambulating path in the space within the railings is also generally seen in the Hindu temple and elsewhere. The chattra on top of the stupa, which is the symbol of nobility, originates from the umbrella
used to shield the noble from strong sunlight. More than religious, it may be said to be a simple form of 'consideration' of the people. The design of the Ashokan pillar in front of the southern 'torana' is the model of
columns in all temples. Even the main body of the 'stupa' is not limited to Buddhism alone, and has Jain examples. In other words, the form of 'stupa' no.1 is simply not created from concepts of Buddhism per se. It already existed within the Indian socio-geographical environment, as a basic form for worshiping or venerating monuments or in the bases of daily propitious observations for good omen in day-to-day living space. The content of the sculptural relief or the storage of Buddha's bones are definitely Buddhist elements, but in the architectural design it can even be said to have none whatsoever. But once given form, as is the way of the world, it gained an independent identity and in countries like Sri Lanka, South Asia, China, Japan etc., where Buddhism spread to, it was truly accepted as the symbol of Buddhist architecture and achieved a
characteristic evolution of its own. On the one hand, as a result of symbolization of the 'stupa', it lost its actual content and cultural background within India. Hence, it lost its place as the chief object of veneration to the image of Buddha, which provided more concrete possibilities and formal diversity for symbolic expression. Consequently, as serious consideration was focussed on temple architecture to house the image of Buddha, the body of the 'stupa' itself went out of use.