King Asoka and his historical significance

King Asoka is one of the most fascinating figures from India's distant past, the last major emperor in the Mauryan dynasty, whose empire spread across the Indian subcontinent and the present day Afghanistan to Bengal. He acquired the title of "Asoka the Great" through the relevance of his superior reign and his efforts to make India a place of serenity, by advocating social concern, religious tolerance, and conquest through the teaching of dharma. Albert Craig notes that Asoka provided a "model of the ideal king for later Hindu and Buddhist thought - the chakravartin, or universal monarch who rules with righteousness, justice, and wisdom" (122). His name "lives on as a symbol of enlightened rule with few if any equals in the history of the East or West" (Craig 122). This is a staggering reputation but Asoka may very well have earned it. He was a ruler transformed for the better by spirituality.

King Asoka was transformed by the violence he witnessed as a result of the Kalinga war. Craig maintains the emperor was "revolted by the bloody Kalinga war" (Craig 121) and, as a result, experienced a religious conversion. Henry Albinski describes the king's mood after the battle as "deeply shaken" (Albinski 65-6). This conversion consisted of following the Buddhist middle path as an "ideal of conduct on both personal and state relations" (Craig 121). He also gave up hunting and eating met and he be came a supporter of nonviolence. He did not completely abandon all types of warfare but he did avoid violence in favor of "conquest by righteousness" (121). His desire was to win others over to his way of thinking by moral example. He pursued dharma, "striving to attain heaven by the merit of good actions" (121). These pursuits and convictions made him a legend in his own time because he literally changed the world around him.

His conversion affected his social concern in many ways. First, He appointed "dharma officials" (Craig 121) to "investigate public welfare problems and to foster just government as the local level" (122). He was somewhat successful removing some of the burdens placed on the population by previous governments. In an effort to create serenity and peace in India, Asoka converted many Hindu mountain replicas of Mt. Meru into stupas for Buddhism. "Wherever he went, he erected commemorative stone pillars, many still standing. From remote corners of Asia, men and women, noble and peasant, scholar and illiterate, followed Asoka's footsteps" (Boorstin 121). In addition, Asoka "sent Buddhist missionaries abroad in the second century B.C., and they were found across China in succeeding centuries" (122). Others believe that his missions could have spread as far as Sri Lanka and Burma. These missionary pilgrimages had another advantage, which was the "opportunity to inspect his domain" (Chodorow 146). "Asoka tried to convert the Greeks in India to Buddhism and sent Buddhist missionaries as far west as Libya and Greece" (Noble 136). Locally, Asoka's establishments improved life, especially those in India, but near the end of his reign, the size of his empire "hampered effective administration" (Boorstin 123) and successive governments eventually fell apart. Craig maintains that the reasons for this decline was not Asoka's rule but rather strains placed upon the economy and government corruption.

A significant aspect of Asoka's conversion was his commitment to convert others. He would do this through teaching of dharma. Asoka was "explicit" (Albinski 66) in his teachings regarding Buddhism. For example, he considered burnet offerings and ceremonies "unprofitable" (Albinski 66) but the practices of Dharma produced "great fruit" (67). To spread his teachings he "advertised the holy places of Buddhism... carved out caves for Buddhist monk worship, lavishly subsidized the order's work, and even arrogated to himself the chore of preventing schisms in Buddhism" (67). His examples include charity and erecting hospitals for men and animals. (Albinski 68-9) Chodorow maintains that Asoka's example "enhanced the prestige of Buddhism" (Chodorow 146). It should be noted that Asoka was a "pragmatist" (147). He did "not abolish capital punishment. His official policy was one of religious tolerance as appropriate for a far-flung empire inhabited by many different communities"(147). His was a different plan of conquest, as it involved religion and general good will toward others. According to Israel Selvanayagam, Asoka's dharma is twofold. One aspect is "practical, concerning interpersonal relationships and emphasizing the duties of each individual at home and in security; the other is doctrinal in a general sense and includes a special concern for sanctity of animals, toleration of other faiths, discipline, and moral progress" (Albinski 64). The emperor's conversion was a reason for him to reach out to others and win them over in a positive way.