Asoka

Title: Asoka

Author: D R Bhandarkar

Publisher: LG Publishers, 2019 (First published 1925)

ISBN: 9789383723461

Pages: 366

Contemplating about a king who lived 2200 years ago, who renounced war as an instrument of state policy and turned to the material and spiritual welfare of his people, is a task more in the realm of  fairy tale than actual history. Remorseful at the violence and large scale loss of life in the conquest of Kalinga, Ashoka turned away from violence and got attracted to Dhamma, following in the footsteps of the great Buddha. Not content with his own change of mind – it cannot be called a conversion or change of faith, as religion as we know them today had still not come into existence – the king spread his message far and wide in his kingdom as well as neighbouring principalities. A series of fourteen rock edicts and seven pillar edicts have been discovered in the expanse of land between Peshawar and Bihar in the east-west direction and Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka in the north-south direction. The edicts of Ashoka are concerned with his Dhamma, and the means he adopted to disseminate it. It provides a glimpse into his personal life too. In a sense, these edicts may be thought of as Ashoka‘s tweets, had he lived in the modern world. Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhandarkar, who is the author of the book, was an archaeologist and epigraphist who worked with the Archaeological Survey of India. This book was first published in 1925 and is one of the pioneering works that guided the deciphering process of the Mauryan inscriptions.

Reconstruction of the life and times of Ashoka from the rock edicts is an intriguing tale in itself, which is told only fleetingly in the book. The edicts spoke of King Priyadarshi Devanampriya (the king who is good to look at and the beloved of the gods). The name Ashoka was adduced to this king after correlating references in Ceylonese chronicles. The author has done a commendable task in re-creating the bureaucratic and social structure of the Mauryan society with liberal inputs from Kautilya’s Arthashastra as props.

Through the edicts, Ashoka exhorted his people to keep Dhamma to reap the benefits in this world as well as the next. For him, Dhamma constitutes of goodness, freedom from depravity, mercy, liberality, truthfulness, purity and gentleness. His proclamations also specified the actions through which Dhamma can be translated to the physical world. It included non-slaughter of animate beings, non-injury to creatures, hearkening to parents, hearkening to elders, reverence to teachers, liberality, seemly behaviour to friends, acquaintances, relatives and towards Brahmana and Shramana ascetics and seemly behaviour to slaves and servants. Even though Ashoka leaned towards Buddhism, the reverence shown to Brahman ascetics is noteworthy. This runs counter to neo-Buddhist commentary emanating mainly from Dalit intellectuals. Ashoka didn't miss the wood for the trees. He rightly projected Dhamma as the core of all religious sects though individually they differ markedly by outward rituals. He was stern when situations so demanded. Schisms had started appearing in the body politic of the Buddhist Sangha at that time and Ashoka ordered strict punishment for mendicants, or commoners who encouraged schism in the religious order. Edicts at Sanchi and Bhabru contain these threats.

Enlightened indeed was Ashoka's rule after his conversion to Dhamma, but the ways in which he sought to control intimate aspects of the daily lives of his subjects smacks of authoritarianism of a serious kind. Prohibition of animal sacrifices is thought to be a way to control Vedic Hinduism. Vegetarianism and respect to elders were elevated from the level of ideals to mandatory duty. But, here we should also bear in mind the likelihood that the king's commands remained only on paper, I mean, in stone and people might have continued to live as they pleased. Ashoka respected and extended his liberality to Brahmanic sects also. Ban on sacrifices does not necessarily imply any antagonism to Brahminism as some of the Upanishads declared against such degenerate practices in no uncertain terms. Again, he did not ask the people to turn vegetarian overnight. Prevention of cruelty to animals included ban on killing of any living being that is neither eaten nor required for any decoration or medicinal purpose. It was definitely not that of the Jain variety. For animals which served as food, he forbade killing, castration or injury on certain auspicious days. Treatment arrangements for sick men and animals were instituted and watering sheds for animate beings were provided along roads.

Ashoka is credited with the use of stone for architectural purposes, replacing wood. Bhandarkar offers a calculated comparison of the Mauryan king to Constantine and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, but ends up elevating his native ruler above others. Here he neglects to take into account one very important principle. Whatever judgement posterity reserved for Ashoka is on the basis of his claims and commands depicted on rocks and pillars. What we have is only a statement of policy rather than a record sheet of achievements compiled by impartial commentators. Keeping aside the hyperbole, the real level of actual accomplishments can only be surmised now. We also see the spirit of geographical integration in his edicts and inscriptions and the use of a common language, Pali, throughout the wide empire. This dialect spoken in Magadha was carried by the state to become the lingua franca of ancient India. On the negative side, the author asserts that progress of political science was suddenly arrested by the moral and spiritual nature of the royal edicts. Religion and philosophy began more and more to absorb the Hindu mind. It is no wonder then that hardly a quarter of a century after his demise, the Bactrian Greeks crossed the Hindu Kush to conquer a large part of India.

A noteworthy feature of Bhandarkar, though an eminent archaeologist, is that he does not provide allowance for considerable embellishments in royal promulgations. One edict states that 100,000 were killed in the Kalinga War, 150,000 taken as slaves and many times as many died in burning and sacking of the city. The author takes this at face value and suggests that this ‘indicate the horrors of a war even in that period when the weapons of destruction were not so diabolical and deadly as now’ (p.21). Again, the mention about the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of animals daily for the royal kitchen is sanctified with a baseless claim that the palace distributed meat to the people! The book includes the full text of the edicts in translated form along with detailed explanatory notes as appendix. The author is not so composed on the face of criticism by fellow scholars. He opposes most of them strongly with comments such as ‘no unbiased person can reasonably doubt’, ‘a conclusion which no sane person will admit’ and ‘more than we can understand’. He confuses the Assyrians with the mythical Asuras found in Sanskrit epics based only on the similarity in names.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star