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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
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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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