In Our Time - Ashoka the Great

Episode Date: February 5, 2015

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Indian Emperor Ashoka. Active in the 3rd century BC, Ashoka conquered almost all of the landmass covered by modern-day India, creating the largest empire South Asia had ever known. After his campaign of conquest he converted to Buddhism, and spread the religion throughout his domain. His edicts were inscribed on the sides of an extraordinary collection of stone pillars spread far and wide across his empire, many of which survive today. Our knowledge of ancient India and its chronology, and how this aligns with the history of Europe, is largely dependent on this important set of inscriptions, which were deciphered only in the nineteenth century.With:Jessica Frazier Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent and a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu StudiesNaomi Appleton Chancellor's Fellow in Religious Studies at the University of EdinburghRichard Gombrich Founder and Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies and Emeritus Professor of Sanskrit at the University of OxfordProducer: Thomas Morris.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about In Our Time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, in 1837, a young British administrator in Calcutta, James Pryncept, succeeded in deciphering a series of mysterious and ancient inscriptions. These had been discovered on rocks and stone pillars all over India. Princep proved that there were relics of the reign of an ancient king called Ashoka, who'd lived in the 3rd century BC.

Shoka ruled most of the Inan subcontinent for almost 40 years, creating one of the largest empires the region has ever seen through ruthless military endeavors. But as he later renounced violence, he converted to Buddhism. In a series of edicts carved into monuments all over his territories, he depicted himself as a benevolent and kindly leader, intent on the welfare of his subjects. Today it's believed that his influence was of critical importance

in the development and spread of Buddhism. With me to discuss Ashoka the Great are Jessica Frazier, lecturer in religious studies at the University of Kent and a research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Richard Gombridge, founder and academic director of the Oxford and Emeritus Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford, and Naomi Appleton, Chancellor's Fellow in Religious Studies, at the University of Edinburgh.

Jessica Frazier, Shoka was a member of the Morian dynasty, which came to power in India in the 4th century BC. How did that dynasty get going? Well, if we look at India in around the 5th century BCE, we're seeing a pattern that we're seeing in many different parts of the world, in the Mediterranean and China, the same in northern India. We're seeing many different states, kingdoms, city states, administrative units that are very advanced in many ways.

They have agriculture, they have trade, they have universities, they're thriving. They have links, but they're not yet unified. And Alexander the Great had almost unified this. region when he came in and tried to take North India. But he'd retreated, he'd failed, probably best for India. But this has left a power vacuum of different dynasties. And it's into this context that the Marians are going to come into power. The stories that we have, we don't know exactly how accurate they are, but the story is that we have a political advisor named Caltilia, who's kind of the Machia Valley of India, but without the negative associations. He was a political

writer who wrote something called the Arthathashtra that explains how to rule. And The story is that he was insulted by one of the most important of the earlier dynasties, the Nandas, in the very vibrant kingdom of Magadha. And he was looking for a champion to overthrow that dynasty and start a new dynasty. He looks around, who can he find? He comes up with someone called Chandra Gupta Maria. We don't know who he was, really. There are stories that he may have been from a ruling caste family fallen low.

We don't really know. But he's very successful in taking over. He succeeds in fomenting dissent within Maghata and also fermenting the enemies of that dynasty until he overtakes the throne in 321 and establishes and spreads an extraordinarily successful empire. Was he responsible for checking Alexander the Great? Chandra Gupta Mario himself.

Yes, he is. Alexander is already having difficulties. And he's, I mean, many people would argue that Alexander the Great is actually stopped by strategic and logistical problems. He can't make his way into the Gangeshetic region. But it's certainly people like Chandra Gopta who are pushing back the forces that he has militarily. So as you said at the beginning of your remarks,

this is an area of many different institutions, religions, states, I know it's a massive ask. But could you give us a little more on that? Yeah, it's a bit like pre-Socratic Greece. You've got different regions. And in those regions, the courts, if you like, are supporting the development of intellectual culture. So there's great diversity.

There's a huge amount of debate happening at that time. It's really not just an empire of states. It's an empire of ideas. And amongst the most important of these, we get a real pluralistic range of religions. There's the ritual Brahminic culture that becomes later Hinduism. But there's also a swathe of atheist ethical philosophies.

The Jains, who have a monastic culture, and would later... They focus on non-violence, Ahimsa, and they're later going to be influential on Gandhi. There's the Charvica's little known but important. They're early atheists, materialists, no soul, no gods. Live your life as best you can. And of course, there's the Buddhists who again have a monastic culture.

Essentially they're atheists. Essentially they're against the soul and its immortality. And they have a very strong ethical tradition that's going to be influential on Ashoka later on. Again, you mention universities. There's a huge development of intellectual culture at this time. And Taksila, particularly Buddhist. Buddhist universities. What are they studying? Well, they're studying, in the Hindu context, they're studying ancient texts. They're

studying the different sciences that go along with the ritual culture that's developed, so language, but they're also developing metaphysical ideas as well. Just as in ancient Greece, we see atomism from Democritus, and we see different philosophies sort of developing there, Nosticism, for instance. We're also getting the development of a wide range of different philosophies here, and that's contributing to the develop of linguistic, sophisticated, as well as real intellectual cultures of debate and discussion and logic. And all of this is going to be hugely influential on the intellectual flourishing in that period. Naomi Ableton, how much is known about Ashoka's early life and how he got to the throne?

How he got the throne? Well, very little. Unfortunately, we have to look outside the inscriptions that you mentioned for that sort of information to the Buddhist biographies that are written of Ashoka. And even they contain quite little about his early life. We do hear that he was not the natural heir. According to some accounts, he was very ugly. His father didn't like him. He sent him off to quell an uprising, but without any weapons, we're told.

So a clear indication that he didn't think he was the chosen one. So how he got the throne is through deception and through violence, essentially. So some accounts tell us that he tricked his father into crowning him on his deathbed because his brother was away. And when his brother came back, he tricked his brother into falling into a pit of life coals and therefore killed him. other accounts actually record that he killed 99 brothers. And they wouldn't have been full brothers, of course, with the idea of the king having many wives. They were half-brothers, essentially,

but obviously great threats in terms of competition for the throne. So a violent character and not the natural air to the... So those are the two things you can really say. He was a violent character, not the natural air, but he got it. According to the legends that we hear about him, and of course there's a possibility there that the violence of his... pre-conversion life, if you like, was exaggerated in order to make its conversion more strong

because we also hear that his early reign was very violent. So what did he inherit and what did he do with it? Because there's his grandfather who, as it were, set it up. Then there's his father who developed it. What had been developed and what a show could do with what he got? Well, he inherited a very large empire, but what he added to it was essentially the area to the south-east of his main capital, his main capital being in Patliputra,

which I believe is modern-day partner. So he did embark on some military conquests, but actually most of what we hear of his early reign is closer to home. It's more about his interactions with his ministers and with his wives. He's said, for example, to have tested the obedience of his ministers by telling them all to dig up all the flowering and fruiting trees and leave only the trees that had thorns in them. And his ministers queried this as a bit of a strange command,

and in the end he got so impatient with him. He said to have had them all beheaded. So we get more nuggets of what his life was like around the court of partner itself. Do you have any evidence of how he took over such an extra sway of the subcontinent until he's gathered, as we were, territorial might, was everything

except the very tip of India? I mean, do we know about battles, do you know about treaties, do you know about deals? Well, the picture painted is a, violent one. So we're talking about military conquest. Again, we're struggling in the sources because what we have essentially is an account that's created by Buddhists that's trying to create this particular image of a very violent king. So of course, therefore, the back-off. So we keep referring to the Buddhist because later there's an immense, when he's

a Buddhist, there's immense amount written of him as a Buddhist. So you're contrasting this with the history and therefore the history is thrown. There's a shadow over the history because it may have been well been influenced by propaganda, of course, and by his later Buddhism. Absolutely, and I think the important thing for the Buddhist accounts is that the contrast between Ashoka before Buddhism and Ashoka after Buddhism. And so, of course, then anything that happens in his early life is associated with violence. But they're not actually so interested in talking about empire as the inscriptions, obviously, are providing a little more evidence there as to where he reigned.

Richard Gronbridge, one event seems to have been, and we're still in rather murky waters here, aren't me, I think, seems to have been the battle at Kalinga. Can you tell us about it and why it might have been significant? I'd like to begin by saying that the only evidence we really have for Osoka are his inscriptions, and all the stuff about

what he's being a violent young man and all this, has come from many hundreds of years later. It's, of course, very typical of hagiography that if you want to say somebody was a great saint, you say that he was a terrific sinner before that. Take the story of the Buddha. The Buddha renounced everything and had no possession, so it had to be

made out that he was a prince who had every luxury and so there's no historical evidence for that either. None of these things are likely to have been true, and they do come from many hundreds of years later, and the Sokha is rather unique because he left these 33

inscriptions, some of them quite long. And you know, those are the first examples of writing in India, so I don't know how they really managed with universities or anything when they had no writing. It was he who first introduced writing into India. So your casting dispute on everything that's been said so far? Absolutely, yes.

At least we know where we are. Shall I now take your question? I mean it would be great if you did, yeah. Yes. Well, in one of his edicts of which there are several copies, Asoka recounted... And just let's talk about these edicts. These edicts are huge monumental stones,

and sometimes 80 feet are high, and there are quite a few left still 30 or so. Please don't look at me so quizzically. I'm just about right. And they're written, and they're all about him and his greatness, and also giving instructions to his people as to how best to live from a Buddhist point of view. So these are the edicts.

Right, right, let's go on. Yes, some are pillars, some of rocks. They're all over the place. They're even not potchards. And he recounts, that when he was in the eighth year of his reign, he fought against the people of Kalinga, which is in modern Orissa.

It's roughly the same as modern Orissa. That's in Eastern India. And he was terribly distressed, he says, by the fact that 150,000 people were captured, were enslaved, 100,000 were slain, and many times that number died. How did he say that?

He says that in his edict. One of one of these stone pillars are rocks. Or several of them, several of the rocks. and what is very interesting, I think, people would like to know, is that he certainly modelled himself again on the Persian habit of putting up great inscriptions, and Darius had put up great inscriptions saying that he'd killed hundreds of thousands of people,

enslaved hundreds of thousands of people, and so on. And this is a counter-statement, so to speak. I do it differently. And he then says how he's terribly upset, and this caused him really a complete change of heart and he converted to Buddhism and he writes at some length about how terribly people suffer when their relatives are killed

when all the people they respect are scattered as if you were describing Syria today or something he describes it as an awful thing and that less changed his mind and made him into a Buddhist and so again the business of meeting a Buddhist monk along the road and that's, it is himself at this slaughtered battlefield that made the change, not being converted by a Buddhist monk,

which is another version. There's no evidence for that. He doesn't say that. So you're convinced that it was this slaughterous victory that changed him from what has been described by your two predecessors on this programme to the Buddhist ruler that he became for the rest of his long reign. Not only am I convinced of that,

but you see, this is possible. I think unique in the history of the world and probably why you want to have a program about him, that he renounces war completely and says he will never again wage war and he hopes that none of his descendants will ever wage war and that he will only reserve the right to defend himself if attacked.

And I don't know if any king, any great king, has ever put up such a statement before or since. Well, we're going to come to whether he's talk to that. Thank you. I'm just going to move on because we'll go Right, Jessica Frasier, we're slightly been ahead of it. Just a minute. How did he communicate this change to his subjects, to his people?

Well, Ashoka has, he's inherited this vast empire, and he's now maintained it and extended it through Kalenga, and it reaches from Bengal all the way over into places like Afghanistan and almost to the tip of India. He's a great administrator, but he has to hold that region, not by force, but by ideas. And how is he going to get those ideas across, or that's where these pillars and these rocks on which he has the inscriptions written come into play.

How are you going to spread, if you like, a public relations message at such an early period in history? No paper. No paper, exactly. You can send people out to decry your message in the villages, but India's huge. There are too many villages. So this is his way of doing it. And they're interesting edicts. He kind of has a two-fold strategy.

On the one hand, he has the pillars, the beautiful, smooth sandstone pillars that are quarried near very. Varanasi, sent up and down the ganges and established all around the gangetic plain. Kind of his heartland is established with these pillars. And they talk about his philosophy of life, his philosophy of politics, and the kind of state that he hopes to reign over. He also has then Rocky Dix inscribed much further afield and often on routes that are taking people outward towards the Mediterranean, up into the Himalayas, down into the south. So these are messages not only to his own people, but to the people at the borders. And I think what's most interesting about them is a huge area he's speaking to. He's speaking in Procret and Indian language, but also there are messages in Aramaic, messages in Greek.

He talks about links with kings as far afield as Egypt in North Africa as well as in Macedonia. What does he want to say? He's very smart. He wants to say, I'm the kind of ruler that you want to have. You don't need to rebel against me. I'm not like the people you've seen before. This is a conquest not by force, but by the virtue. of my ideas alone.

And then, Nehmer, there's a welfare aspect of these edicts. Could you give listeners a sketch of what he is promising them? Of course, yes. So one of the things that he does is incredibly practical. As he declares, he's digging wells along travel routes and he's providing shelter, he's planting trees. He's finding out the herbs that can be used to cure diseases from humans and animals, and he's planting them along these areas so that people can use them.

to heal themselves and to heal their animals. And so it's a very practical form of concern with welfare. And he's really thinking about what will benefit people and what will help people, and imposing that along all of his roots around his enormous empire. In addition to history, which has been rejected by your colleague on my right, and the edicts, which are these stone pillars, which are there and Prince have translated them, There are their Buddhist texts.

He became the most famous Buddhist after Buddha. What do they give? Yes, and Richard's absolutely right that these texts are later, substantially later than the life of Ashoka. The earliest that we have dates to perhaps the first or second centuries of the common era, and some of them much later. So we are dealing with hagiography and legend, and that's certainly where all the so-called evidence comes from

for what I spoke about earlier to do with his early life and the violence of his early reign. Interestingly, the textual sources provide a very different account, and they don't seem to show any awareness of the Ashoka of the edicts at all. So, for example, the Kalinga conversion is not mentioned. He's said to have been converted simply by a charismatic monk. And they have an awareness of Ashoka having undertaken pilgrimage, which is something we also know about from his pillar edicts,

but they associate him rather with building relicaries or stupas rather than pillars or edicts. So a very different account and one that really is focused upon Ashoka as a bad king, Ashoka the fierce, becoming Ashoka the Dharmic King, the Good King. And that contrast for the Buddhists is quite striking. Richard Gombrich, can we go back to these edicts, which are extraordinary,

and they've been touched on by all three of you, but can you develop that, what was said in them, why they're important, what effect they might have had then and since? First, let me just repeat, the first example of writing in India. So there's no question that he had an option because obviously the whole population is entirely illiterate. And we do know the edicts are fascinating because some of them are instructions to his officials and how to deal with the edicts and what to do about them.

And we know that they were put up in common. Does every edict come with an instructor standing beside the edict when people turn out to explain? Not everyone. Yes, yes. Yes, many of them do. And we know that they were put in very prominent places, say a hill outside a city or something like that, and people would gather there,

and the officials were instructed to tell the people what the emperor had written. That was how he diffused his message. There was no other possibility at that time, I think. And that's why he also had these officials who had to go on tour. And what they had to do when they went on tour was to ensure that his policies were being carried out and these were what we would call welfare policies. He said you must look after women and widows and orphans.

You must see to it that the older being properly looked after. There was a lot about caring for the sick and medicine and so on. And also, of course, respect for holy men. In these, the edicts are quite substantial and he tells us an awful lot about himself. And there are overlaps with what history said, namely that he sent out these missions beyond India's borders.

And thus there's not the slightest doubt that he individually personally was the person who made Buddhism a world religion. And I think the big question that we all want to know is, was this mere propaganda or a bit of propaganda or not propaganda at all? Of course, I think, think how you answer that question depends on how cynical you are personally. I'm convinced

that it was absolutely sincere. Why would you go to this immense trouble of talking about spreading your doctrine? And he says, for instance, the doctrine he used the word is term Dhamma. And he actually says in these words, what is Dama? Dama is having few vices and many virtues, compassion, generosity, truthfulness, and purity. And that's only one of several places where he gives a list of the qualities that he is trying to inculcate in people

and says, I'm inculcating these qualities because they will benefit you in this life and the next. Can we come back to you, Descartes? Let's stick to this word Dharma. Can we just take that? Because as I read from the notes, it includes things like forgive your

enemy. I mean we're getting very close to something that happened about 300 years later. Something that was said then. So it's in the currency of moral instruction then. Yeah, absolutely. You're to say, Richard?

Absolutely, because he gets it straight out of the Buddhist scriptures. I think that's right. I mean, this question, whether he's sincere or not, he doesn't give you Buddhist doctrine and great metaphysical detail, but he gives you Buddhist ethics. And he explains the ideas and he gives them to you from the heart.

It's actually central, I think, to the idea that he wants a political reign that is also philosophical. And Dharma is at the center of what it means to have ideals-driven politics in his empire. So this Dharma idea is you say... That's D-H-I-R-M-I-A-A-S. Depends which version you have. In Sanskrit, it's Dharma. In Prakrit-Pali, we've got Dhamma, which is the Buddhist version that he, he uses. The Hindus have an idea of it which is linked to concepts of order and harmony. The Buddhists

have an idea of it that is very multifaceted, but it means things like the truth of reality. It means things like an ethical way of life. And it also means specifically compassion. That's something that the Buddhists bring to this idea that's unique and extraordinary, and maybe where you see a link to things like Christian philosophy later, compassion the most impractical and yet one of the most idealistic of virtues. And Ashoka mixes these different meanings into his use of Dharma as indeed an ethical way of life. When he translates it into Greek, he gets Eusebia a kind of piety, good way of right conduct, real ethics in society. And that links, I think, with his welfare plan, that he puts out medicinal plants, that he builds wells, that he supports the old and the

poor, that he just wants to spread a kind of welfare throughout the whole of the realm that he's leading. Dharma has a nice implication. to it because it also has this implication of that's the order of things. It means that it's natural to be good and ethical in society rather than that it's something you have to struggle for. Lean in to Dharma and you can

have an ideal society much more easily than you think. And I think that's really what's meant to make his whole reign be appealing to people. I mean, you can imagine people who've been horribly abandoned and injured by passing dynasties and wars and they read

this from a man who wants to be their father in Dharma and they think, yes, this is exactly where we want to be at this time in history. Richard Gombris, what practical steps did he take to promote Buddhism? I don't think he saw himself as promoting exactly Buddhism. He saw himself as promoting morality. He actually says, again, we only need to quote his own words, that teaching Dharma, the righteousness is the best possible activity and the prerequisite for Dharma is morality.

And that's why it sounds rather tedious and naive, perhaps, the modern people reading this is almost something like written for elementary school, but after all he was speaking to a very unsophisticated audience. And therefore, he again and again stresses that what he is preaching will do them good in this life. He says, don't rely on silly rituals. What you've got to do is to be kind to your servants, obedient to your parents,

respect your religious teachers, be generous and give money wherever it is needed. And should these things not bring you good results in this life, at least you won't have lost anything and they will certainly bring you good results in the next life. So he saw these things as absolutely practical. But is this part of Buddhism or just inserted? It is part of Buddhism.

Absolutely. Yes. and I mean again and again in edicts there are direct allusions to the texts of course The old Buddhist texts Yes Of course they weren't written down

He hadn't studied in a monastery He didn't have long passages by heart It's not always word for word What the Buddha said But the essence of it is all there And he said for instance Former kings went hunting I'm not going hunting

I'm going on pilgrimage etc and on tours to see that people are getting what they need. Can we talk about this test a little bit more, Naomi Appleton? Can you tell us a bit more about these Buddhist texts at the time of Ashoka? Absolutely. Well, we have basically two sets of legends about Ashoka, one from North India, starting from about the first or second century of the common era, and one from Sri Lanka. And actually, the set of texts from Sri Lanka are perhaps most interesting

with regard to what Richard's been saying about the propagation of people, Buddhism by Ashoka because these texts are very much concerned with the history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and they associate that history with Ashoka. They hold Ashoka personally responsible for having sent missionaries out from his empire and specifically to Sri Lanka and bringing Buddhism to the island. And indeed they even credit that to Ashoka's own son, Mahinda, who is traditionally believed to have become a Buddhist monk and to have travelled to Sri Lanka, brought Buddhism and established it there. So for Sri Lankan Buddhists, Ashoka's Buddhism is very important because it's a real integral part of the history of their own island.

Are the texts that he puts up on these stones and pillars and rocks, are they Buddhist texts or are they Buddhist texts which come through Ashoka's view of his own position in all this? Well, he does mention some Buddhist texts by name, as Richard says. So there is definitely a sense in which he is clearly identifying with Buddhism as a tradition at the time. I think some of the readings of his inscriptions have been coloured by people, people's readings of the subsequent legends. So once these two pieces of evidence were put together, we can see, for example, mentions of him sending envoys out. Is that envoys, is that missionaries? We're not quite sure. Whenever he uses the term dama, we have to be careful not to read too much

Buddhist into it. It may not be explicitly a Buddhist dama that he's talking about. It may be a more general ethical dama, this term, of course, having a wider residence at the time. When he came to the throne, after the Battle of Kalingas, what was the state of Buddhism in, let's call it India for this. What was the state of Buddhism? How big was it? So and so forth. All the evidence is indirect. We don't have anything comparable to what we have about Asoka. Buddhism had existed for about one and a half centuries. And it's quite obvious that it had spread a good deal within India. And so there were a good many monasteries with monks. And if I may, I'd just like to repeat what Naomi said, that actually in one of his inscriptions,

he lists a number of Buddhist texts by title saying these are other texts I particularly recommend to you to study. So it's not just that there are general allusions scattered throughout his edicts, but we know that he knew these particular texts. And he also says that he wants people to go to the monasteries and make sure that the monks are not creating dissension and splitting the Sanga, which ever since the time of the Buddha is thought to be about the worst thing you can do for Buddhist. to cause it to split, and he tells people to go and have a look that the monks are in agreement, and to defrock those who are causing disagreement. Now, what was, I mean, the state of Buddhism, if you want to know the content, well, we have a whole bookcaseful, so to speak, of texts,

but they were still being preserved orally, and they were only written down gradually from the time of Osoka on, I say from that time on because it was he who introduced writing into India as far as we know. And over the next two, three centuries they were written down. And we have them today, of course, imprinted and now in electronic form. But it's a vast body of literature. It makes the Christian or the Muslim legacy from the first centuries look very puny. Can I come to you, Jessica Frazier? Do you – have we any idea – you're walking eggs here, aren't you, about evidence?

Have we any idea how thoroughly Ashoka managed to carry out those promises on those stones and pillars? As you say, it's very difficult to assess because of what we keep coming back to this theme in this session, we keep seeing that we have a problem of evidence. We've got things like the Arthashtra Baikaliawai, that talks about what kind of a state was supposed to have been there before, and Megastanis, a Greek envoy, had been to India, before Ashokan seen already a pretty sophisticated society, with a lot of administrative achievements already going on. So we don't, I mean, already things were pretty good. It's very hard to tell whether his welfare,

this is really part of the essential part of what he's doing, that's new and distinctive. It's very hard to tell whether he actually did all that stuff and whether it worked. People sometimes are sceptical because a lot of his most idealistic edicts are found furthest away from the territories he's actually ruling. So, for instance, his remorse about Kalinga

is expressed away from Kalinga. but when he gets actually to the edicts that are in killing he doesn't say, guys, I'm really sorry. He says, I'm just going to try and rule you well from now on. And this can lead people to say, was he really sincere about all of this? Is it all just public relations? Is it all PR? And of course, so much of the edicts of the Buddhist texts

are effectively propagandist in one way or another, it's hard to assess. My own feeling is, on the one hand, you can assess some of his success through the advances that we see in the succeeding centuries. Indian culture after Ashoka and the Marias is very impressive. The intellectual developments in that period are second to none. We can certainly see that his spread

of Buddhism is very successful. I mean, whatever he achieved at home, welfare policies are ephemeral. It's hard to trace 10 years after they fail whether they were ever there in the first place. We know that in Buddhism, in Buddhist countries, there was a great success in spreading his ideals. Richard, do you like to come in on that? Yes, very much. Thank you very much. Firstly, yes, there is this book, the Atta Shasta, which Jessica has talked about. And I think she's talked about it because there was a book written on Asoka about 40, 50 years ago,

which claimed that he came from the time of Asoka. Nobody, I think, seriously thinks now it's about 400 or 500 years later. And all this sophisticated state apparatus is something half a millennium later. But there's a very good evidence in a general sense for what you, you asked. You see, we have a very clear idea from Brahminical texts. What Brahmians and later Hindus have thought a king should be like, what he should do, what he should impose, and so on. And Asoka, for instance, doesn't mention the caste system. He doesn't support the caste system because he's a Buddhist. He also forbids blood sacrifices. He also denigrates in very

strong language, the rituals that are being carried on. In other words, in just one word, he's anti-Brahmin, he's anti-Hindu. So the result of this is that although for about three or four hundred years after Asoka, there were lots and lots of Buddhist kings and kingdoms in India, the Brahmins managed to bury him. He's not a part of Indian history. You began by saying that he was discovered, as it were, by the deciphering of his inscriptions by an Englishman in 1837. And to this day, even now, in Indian schools, for instance, the school books make very little of him. And he's known as a Hindu king. They never say that he wasn't in favor of the caste system.

They never say that he forbade sacrifices. They never say the sort of things that he said because they are correctly. considered antithetical to Hinduism. And one of the most remarkable things about Asoka is that although he was certainly one of the greatest kings, and that's not a value judgment, he ruled virtually the whole of India, which nobody did to the British in the 19th century,

one of the greatest kings ever known in history, the Indians, very cleverly, totally forgot him and totally buried him. And that's because he was effective, He did exactly what they disapproved of, and he knew he was doing it. But, yes, Naomi Ableton, how was he remembered by the Buddhist traditions then? They were there, they were strong. Didn't they carry his memory and spread his memory over the next 2,000 years before the rediscovery by the English one?

Absolutely. So while the edicts were forgotten, and as Richard says, the sort of Indian history really forgets Ashoka, Although you do get, of course, responses to his reign in the creation of Brahmanical notions of kingship as well, the Buddhists remembered him, but they didn't remember his edicts. They didn't remember him as a king who put up pillars. They remembered him as a king who set up stupers or shrines, who established pilgrimage to the sites associated with the Buddha's life,

who patronised the Buddhist community, supported the monastic community very highly with great gifts, very, very elaborate gifts. He said to have given everything away right up into his death, bed, he gave away his last belonging, which was half a piece of fruit, and he still gave that to the monastic community. So he's remembered very much as an ideal, not just an ideal king, but actually an ideal layperson, an ideal supporter of the monastic community. And he creates this model of kingship that's followed by kings throughout the Buddhist world in subsequent

centuries. What else do we know about his death, Jessica, besides giving away half a piece of fruit? Well, we have the wonderful Buddhist stories of how extraordinarily virtuous he is, but We also know that it may not have been quite so simple matter. We don't know who was meant to be his successor necessarily. We don't know. There are suggestions that there were fights over who would be the person who would take over from him. Some suggestions that there was one son who was hated by a different wife and there were fights between them. So there are problems about whether or not he had a very successful or effective succession.

I think that goes back to the stories that are told about him giving this gift away. The reason he only has half a fruit left is because his successes have taken away all his power and his dotage. and well he's giving everything away. This is totally erratic. We can't have this. We can't have this going on. And so the stories suggest that that was an issue. Two questions, Richard, I know you want to come in.

First of all, if you were to talk a bit more about his death, that's fine. But secondly, he's made Buddhism very powerful. You've spoken eloquently about how he's been rubbed out. Why was he rubbed out when Buddhism became so powerful? And he was such a great figure in the development of their religion. Didn't they keep him alive? Well, firstly, as far as we know, it was his descendants who ruled India for about 50 years. The next king we really know about is a Hindu general we know did a coup d'etat in 185 BC.

That's 50 years after Osuka's death. And, of course, in those days, things were pretty volatile. So I don't think that, where we certainly don't know anything about the circumstances of his own death, but his legacy did live on in various ways. But listeners must understand how crucial the caste system is in India. It's the very essence of society. And the job of a king normally is to support and maintain the caste system and make it keep working.

And somebody who doesn't do that and doesn't support Brahmin priests to do sacrifices and so on, obviously that is going to be cataclysmic in India. But as Naomi said, but one could say more specifically. We know that even in the Empress of China, who was a Buddhist at one point, and then a king of Cambodia and so on, have specifically modeled themselves on Asoka, and there's one very interesting inscription when he says

that he is so concerned that he should always be active for the welfare of his people, that he strictly commands that anything that needs doing, he must be reported to him, even if he's in his bedroom, even if he's with his women, even if he's on the toilet. He wants, and anything that happens in the council,

he must be informed because he is the father of his people and he feels responsible for everything. And they knew about that. And they knew about that in Cambodia, and I think it was the 12th century. So outside India, not just in general, but really ruling monarchs were inspired by the fragments that they knew of what Asoka had done.

Jessica, yes. Jessica Brasier. Just to notice that there's an element of this story that sounds tragic in the West but actually is victorious, if you read it from kind of an Indian perspective. The idea of Ashoka dying and difficult circumstances with everything taken away from him and turning to religion is actually an echo of what happened to his grandfather, Chandra Gupta, who established the whole dynasty, who at the end of his life abdicated the throne to become a Jain monk and to go to a monastery and starve himself to death in the spiritual pursuit of higher things.

this notion of the emperor who loses power only to gain religion or philosophy actually is a very powerful image that means that it's not a tragedy when the emperor ends in this way. It's actually the natural progression of moving on to higher things. And I think that link between, if you like the spiritual and the political, is something that would have longer echoes through Indian history. Nam, it was Richard who brought in the word cynic only to dismiss it earlier on, but still that's re-employed. Is there any sense at all that his conversion was

not entirely sincere that he was the best way to rule what had become an extraordinary big empire? Well, I suppose I can't count myself as a cynic and I think actually what Jessica said earlier was pretty much spot on compassion which is one of the big ethical principles of his reign

is a pretty impractical ethic if we're going to reign a vast empire being compassionate is not necessarily the most practical way to do it so I don't sense the cynicism in his conversion but I do think there is a real ambivalence around his kingship and around the extent to which it's possible to rule without violence and I think that ambivalence is definitely reflected certainly in the Buddhist texts which really are grappling with this whole question of can you be a king

and still be a really committed Buddhist. Of course the Buddhist ideal would be to become a monk and pursue the religious life wholeheartedly. We must take into account one edict in which he says at some length and repetitively my subjects must honor all religions, all religions, the holy men and the laity of all religions. Not only that, he says it is very bad to praise your own religion and denigrate other people's religion. You must inform your neighbors, you must form each other about your religions,

and he repeats, and do not praise your own religion, and don't denigrate other people that you will only suffer demerit for doing. wrong for that. And may I just slip in one wonderful thing he says. He says it is very difficult to do good and easily to do evil, but it is most difficult to do good if you're high up in society. It's hardest for powerful people to be good. I think that's wonderful. Jessica. Jessica I think sometimes in the West we have an idea that politics and ideals can't easily go together. There's kind of a feeling that if a politician is being practical in their use of a certain ethical message, it's only for some sort of nefarious underlying pragmatic good. But actually what Ashoka's done is see that precisely to pursue those ideals and those ethics,

to create a nation and empire that's based on compassionate, welfare, community self-sustaining principles of virtue, is practical. So when the West looks at Ashoka and says, was he sincere or was he merely pragmatic, he was both? and his great genius was to see that both work well together. And for a time you think they did, Richard Gombrich? I think so. That's a very good way to end the programme.

Thank you, Richard Gombridge, Jessica Frazier, Naomi Appleton. Next week we'll be talking to the photon, the fundamental particle of physics, and one way of thinking a fundamental particle of physics, and one way of talking about thinking about light. Thank you very much for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time. now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.

Well, did you enjoy that, Richard? Yes, I did, thank you. I learned so much. There's a great deal of more of wonderful things that he said. I particularly like that he says that there are two ways of getting things down properly. One is by regulation, and the other is by inner conviction. But inner conviction is much better and more effective. Isn't that wonderful to put that?

a modern edict. Yeah, all politics should be done that way. That's extraordinary. Did anybody, you know, anybody who tried to follow his example with any success?

Well, a lot of Buddhist monarchs did. I mean... And didn't the Sri Lankan king Tissa tried to model himself on? Yes. I don't know if he was nice or not, but... Yes, I mean, in the time of the Mahavangsa,

of course, it's sort of relating the idea of Oshoca's kingship to the kings of the time in Sri Lanka and definitely using him as a model. And there's certainly a... a sense in which that relationship between the king and the monastery, the state and the monastery, has continued, especially in Theravada countries, the countries of South and Southeast Asia.

I love it that if you go to Thailand, the king was a monk for a period. Right. You know, that you have monarchs who spend a time following these ethics completely as a personal life commitment. Currently, is he held in high esteem by Buddhists today? Buddhist, yes. Oh, yes.

And low esteemed by Hindus. But the Buddhists don't seem to get the ear of the, of the, of the news of the newspapers, of feature writers, according you, it's still stamped out, and children at school don't know who is. Well, that's because Buddhism died out in India. I mean, that's essentially the issue is Buddhism's thrived outside of India. India responded to a Shogah's legacy

essentially by creating their own vision of kingship and promoting that, a very Brahmanical and Hindu version of kings. It varies with the government. The present government has ordered old school hill history books to be rewritten to again tone him down and other such things. And this has happened once before in modern Indian history. There's a running battle.

But just to notice, I think you wrote the present government is a very strange situation. But I mean, of course, on the flag of India, the symbol of India is still in a shaken pillar. He's there as part of this ideal. The Indian flag has his wheel of the Dharma on it. But that was Jawahal-Laneru, who was virtually a Buddhist, very, very pro-Buddhist, and who invented the five principles and so. which all comes from Buddhism. And Gandhi, of course, is Jane influenced.

So there's, I mean, maybe it reminds us that Indian isn't only Hindu. It's also Buddhist. It's also Jane that the Ashokan legacy is in there, but it's not necessarily there in this very mainstream, kind of sometimes quite nationalistic Hindu set of ideas. Yeah. This is going to be terrible if you put it on air. Very political.

But I do, I find this whole question of the legacy really interesting because as a scholar, he's fascinating, because we do, we have these. edicts on the one hand which nobody could read for most of their history. And then we have these legends which are preserved outside of India and which have no awareness in them of any of the edicts. And so we're really trying to piece together this whole detective story as to who is this person. And even once they managed to decipher the script, as Richard mentioned, Princef in 1837, even after they could read these inscriptions, they didn't know who they were about. It didn't say a

shoka on the inscriptions. It was beloved of the gods, king beloved of the gods. And it was actually the texts and the Buddhist texts, which allowed them. to make that connection and say, oh, hang on, the Buddhist text preserve this story of the king that the Indian texts have sort of written out of history. And this is the one who's written these edicts. So the whole question of how the puzzle is put together, I just think is really fascinating for scholars. I don't think he would have sounded quite so anti-hint. I'm going to get in trouble. But I don't think you would have sounded to many, in many periods of Indian history, that anti-Hindu. He says no more sacrifices, absolutely. But then half the Hindus

are going, oh, we shouldn't have blood sacrifices. Oh, there's a blood sacrifice. Oh, well, never mind. But he's kind of expressing ideals that everybody shares. You know they're still gone today blood sacrifices, don't you? Yes. Plenty of them and very bloody, yes. But I mean, both are part of Indian cultural history, I think. Like it's, Christianity has blood and it has

peace. It has war and it has nonviolence. I mean, it's a complex history, I think. That's for sure. Here comes Tom. That was tremendous. Thank you very much. There are many more Radio 4 arts and discussion programmes to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.co.uk slash radio 4.