Ashoka

The conqueror, the Buddhist

The dynasty of Maurya

Just like Krishna, Mahavira or Gautama Buddha before him, Asoka is born in a royal family, Maurya, of the warlike caste of Kshatriya. His/her grandfather Chandragupta reigned on a vast empire which extended until the Afghanistan. He establishes an administration on the example of Persians and the capital, with the enormous proportions, Pataliputra, was built on the architectural model of Persépolis. But the founder of the dynasty of Maurya wearied intrigues of the court and abdicated in favor of his Bindusara son. Chandragupta then followed the lesson of a Master Jaïn and was withdrawn with him in a place isolated in order to finish its days in the fast and the meditation. His/her son, the father of Asoka, remained on the throne only little time. He also chooses the life of ascetic and renonça to the royalty.

The accession of Ashoka to the throne seems to have posed problem because it is crowned only four years after this one. When Asoka reaches the sovereign capacity, Maurya reign on most of India, having unified by the force the innumerable principalities, republics and tribes. It is the apogee of the powerful dynasty. Infiltrations, espionages and deportations are the political instruments of the young despot. Its secret police sows terror. Asoka concludes from alliances with its neighbors but does not respect them. Its thirst for conquest is large. It causes hostilities in order to open an access towards the south of the kingdom.

The war and the metamorphosis

This war of Kalinga makes more than 100,000 dead. There remains about it still today of the traces, more than 2000 years afterwards: in the red stone hills, caves and monuments carry mural frescos which, like a illustrated album, describe the massacres and the history of a conqueror and his illumination. One sees there burned villages, rivers reddened by the blood of the corpses, the women crying over the skin of their son, of the cattle pourrissant along the ways, the vultures turning in the sky in the search of fresh flesh, and finally, a sanguinary warrior, Asoka, seized by remorse.

Wise jaïns and Buddhists then beg it to put an end to the conflict and to make peace. They explain the deep significance of the AHIMSA, word Sanskrit meaning non-violence, refusal to him to kill, harm or destroy: “The life is expensive with all the beings, all fear the suffering and fear their destruction. The respect, the compassion and the tolerance remain the gasoline of wisdom”.

According to Buddha, one of the paramount duties of a king is to make reign peace, to avoid at all costs the war and any thing implying violence and destruction of the life. The bad karma does not have any catch on that which is identified with all the beings, which considers them of an equal glance. The AHIMSA is related to the renouncement to want to have and dominate. The pacifist attitudes unite with the dharma, the law, the universal duty, on the paved way of right actions.

That my heart takes refuge with the feet of the Buddha. At 20 years, the veil of the illusion grows blurred, the chains of the attachment break for Asoka. It is with the AHIMSA-DHARMA that it from now on will pacify all the subjects of its empire.

On the site of the battle of Orissa, it makes engrave in the stone:

“Devanamapriya (Asoka) conquering of Kalinga, now has remorses with the thought which the conquest is not a conquest bus of the men was assassinated, killed and exiled at the time of such a conquest. Devanamapriya tests that with many sadness and regrets. Now, the loss of the hundredth or even of the thousandths of all the lives which were killed, which died or was taken along captive at the time where Kalinga was conquered, Devanamapriya deplores it. He considers that even those which cause him wrong deserve to be forgiven for the wrongs which can be forgiven. Because he believes that all the beings must remain safe, to have the control of themselves, to be also treated and to carry out a happy life. For Devanamapriya, the conquest by the virtue is the most important conquest”.

Under the direction of a Buddhist Master, Asoka makes a two years retirement, then, for a few dozen years takes again in hand the destinies of its empire.

The sympathizing sovereign

Ashoka changes goal completely, but there remains an active sovereign, who will leave innumerable traces.

A body of senior officials is charged to repair the made injustices. Its secret police is dismantled.

With the four corners of the kingdom, Asoka proclaims on rock faces or columns its aversion for violence and its adhesion with the ahimsa. These steles are found everywhere where the people can read them, in the crowned places, with the crossroads of the cities. They will remain intact and readable during millenia. Often surmounted by a lion, the pillars are as decorated of Dharmachakra, the wheel of the Dharma, the law crowned as Bouddha put moving for all the living beings, at the time of its terrestrial passage.

“That which refuses to drive out or fish, which does not kill and wants to be the cause of dead for no creature, weak or powerful, here is a man of good”. (Buddha, Dhammapada)

Understanding that to kill is always an abomination and that to drive out and fish are failures with the ahimsa, Asoka regulates hunting severely. It supports the Végétarisme in all the kingdom and prohibits the ritual sacrifices of animals. In its palates, no animal is put at death, all the royal court abstains from animal flesh. A typical banquet of the king could be composed of grapes, dates and mangos, sweetened cakes, rice boiled with spices and of hot milk to the saffron.

The absence of any cruelty and a benevolent attitude must include not only the human ones but also the animals: “This gift (the dharma) consists in treating slaves and servants equitably, obeying the mother and the father, using of liberality towards the friends, knowledge, parents, priests and ascetics and not killing the animals. ” (Asoka, edict 10)

The interdependence of the lives is woven on the same desire not to suffer more and of living in peace. One should neither approve nor to encourage violence. In this spirit of helpful compassion, one should not frighten the animals, fill them of fear, torment them, inflict pain to them, dominate them brutally. This ethical control implies necessarily a non-violent form of food.

By solidarity with the animal world, Asoka founds hospitals, old people's homes in order to collect the sick animals or old. He encourages the protection of the forests and the medicinal plants.

He helps with the diffusion of the Bouddhisme. However no proof can attest its conversion. He will be however an enthusiastic propagandist and will send for it missionaries as far as the island from Ceylon, which will be converted by his/her Sanghamita daughter and her son - or brother - Mahinda, only quoted by the Singhalese, but ignored chronicles Indian inscriptions which mention only three of its sons, Tvara, Kunala and Jalauka.

The king goes in pilgrimage to the places which the presence of the Buddha sanctified and gives liberally to the monasteries. He names controllers of the dharma who carry out periodic rounds of inspection in all the empire. Itself traverses its kingdom and propagates its vision of the ahimsa-dharma in the cities of the most moved back provinces. Under its reign, no war will burst in the pacified States.

One allots to Asoka the erection of 84.000 Stûpa S, monticules circular of bricks or stones containing of the relics of the Bouddha or of famous Bodhisattvas, these waked up beings devoting itself to save suffering humanity. The king sends also missionaries to the Ceylon, in Burma, China and embassies with the Greek princes of time, Antiochus II of Syria and Antigone II Gonatas of Macedonia. He convenes the third Buddhist council whose major concern will be the diffusion of Buddhism.

Asoka founds moreover the writing known as Brahmi being used to compile documents. After the pictographic writing of the era of Indus which lasted until approximately 1.500 before J. - C., the oldest decipherable Indian writing goes back to Asoka. As soon as it used it, it became the writing of all the India. The majority of the modern Indian writings are of this fact derived from the brahmi.

The history hardly left details on the personal life of Asoka. It is known that he married the girl of a banker, that he had children and a palate of summer on the site even of Kalinga. His/her son (or his/her brother?) brought the lesson of Buddha out of India. Its Samprati grandson was for its part a propagator of the Jaïnisme.

After does forty years of reign, Asoka finish its days in méditative loneliness like its ancestors? No one really does not know. After its reign, the Maurya Empire exhausted and knew again serious upheavals, fatal invasions and religious schisms.

Durable traces

In the ruins of Kalinga, caves open in the rocks. There during centuries, they sheltered buddhist monks and jaïns come to absorb itself in the Absolute, with the variation of the human illusions. Close to the battle field, a white and round pagoda embraces all the horizon. As far as the eye can see, of the green fields encircle this temple dedicated to peace. Motionless lions keep of it the entry and on the dome of the structure several small cupolas touch the sky as connected with cosmos. A luminous Buddha, embedded in the stone, meditates on the impermanent, transitory and painful shapes of this world. Splendors of the court of Asoka seem quite remote in the debris, the vegetation and the cries of the famished monkeys. “Yes, I say it to you: any master key. Take care of your safety”, would have said the Buddha before leaving its body. Any master key. But the message of the AHIMSA-DHARMA of Asoka, the peaceful warrior, is always alive.

The source of the majority of our knowledge on Ashoka is consisted the many inscriptions which it made engrave on pillars and rocks in all its empire, mainly in language mâgadhî (a Prâkrit) in the writing Brâhmî (and sometimes in characters kharosthi), but also in Greek and Araméen. In addition to these inscriptions represent the first certificates of the written notation of an Indian language and that this same writing will currently give rise to all the Semi-spelling-book S present on the Indian ground (like the Devanâgarî), they supported the propagation of Buddhist ethics and encouraged non-violence and adhesion with the doctrines of the Dharma, the duty or behavior right. There one notes also the importance given to a vulgar and vernacular language, a prâkrit, with the detriment of noble” and literary language the “, the Sanskrit, showing a concern of being included/understood by the people.

He increases his capital Pataliputra - current the Patna - and there made build a palate in the Persian style. He convenes also the 3 {{E}} Concile Buddhist (253 av. J. - C. or 243 av. J. - C.).

Following the enlightened reign of Ashoka, the reform of the empire Maurya is made profitable by invaders, and soon it enters declining and splits up in a multitude of principalities. Until British colonization, approximately 2000 years later, never such a most of the sub-continent will not be plain under the same government.

Recognizing its role without precedent in the history of the country, India made capital of the columns of Ashoka or lât , one of the symbols of the Indian republic.

Two decrees extracted the edicts of Ashoka

1st Decree: Formerly in the kitchens of king Piyadassi ( another name of Ashoka ), the Beloved of the Gods, the hundreds of thousands of animals were killed daily for their meat. Henceforth, only three animals will be killed, two peacocks and a stag and the stag not systematically. Even these three animals will not be it any more in the future.

2nd Decree: Everywhere in the empire of the Beloved of the Gods, king Piyadassi and even in the kingdoms at its borders, like those of the Chola, Pandya, Satyapoutra, Kéralapoutra as well as in that of Ceylon and the Greek king named Antiochos and in those of the kings who are close to Antiochos, everywhere the two assistances of the Beloved of Gods, king Piyadassi, are provided. Those consist of medical care for the men and attention for the animals. The medicinal herbs so useful for the man or the animal, are brought and planted everywhere where they do not push naturally; in the same way, roots and fruits are brought and planted everywhere where they do not push naturally. Wells are dug along roads and of the trees planted for many men and of the animals.

See too

Internal bond

Asoka, a film adaptation of the life of Ashoka
Grammar of the Sanskrit pronunciation and orthography of the Sanskrit

External bond

Edicts of English Ashoka

Zh-classical: 阿育王

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