When compared to Christian monasticism, Buddhist monasticism was markedly less hierarchical. The Buddha refused to appoint a successor, saying that the Dhamma was all that the monks needed, and even within monasteries hierarchy was minimal, though the development of an elaborate set of monastic rules, the Vinaya, was an attempt to maintain order. Each monk was to pursue the Path on his own, but the relation between teacher and student was important and gave rise to teaching lineages; the fractures between these lineages could become the structural basis for “sectarian” splits. The Sangha was in no sense a model for society as a whole and stood deliberately at a distance from it, but the somewhat amorphous nature of Buddhist monasticism, as we have seen, necessitated a close relation between monks and lay patrons, often kings, high officials, or wealthy merchants. If there was an effort to create something like a parallel community relative to the existing social order, it consisted not of monks alone but of monks and laity together.
Buddhism, in spite of becoming one of the greatest of all missionary religions, spreading to virtually all of Southeast and East Asia, was in India, without remainder, and to some degree incomprehensibly, absorbed by Hinduism.204 To what extent what was absorbed changed the absorbers is a matter of scholarly inquiry and argument. What is undeniable is that a degree of ethical universalism, barely foreshadowed in the Brahmanic tradition, is evident in the great theistic movements of later Hinduism.
Religion and Politics after Buddhism
The teachings of the Buddha are clearly post-Vedic, and they are but one expression of a society, and particularly a polity, that is post Vedic as well, remembering that there is a sense in which India is never “post Vedic.” Magadha, one of the centers of early Buddhism, represents a new kind of politylarger, more centralized, with a somewhat different conception of kingship and rule than had prevailed earlier. The Buddhist texts themselves give much evidence of significant cultural, social, and political changes, but there are other important texts that we must consider, however briefly. Perhaps most important are the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata-which, though they are very different from the Iliad and the Odyssey, do indeed have an epic form-but also such texts as the Dharmasasastra of Manu and the Arthasastra of Kautaliya. These texts are not precisely datable and probably contain material from more than one time, but in their present form they date from the last centuries BCE and the first centuries CE.
We must also consider not only the growth of centralized monarchies but the creation of what can only be called an empire: the Mauryan dynasty (321-185 BCE) founded in Magadha by Candragupta Maurya, but reaching its greatest extent under its most famous ruler, Asoka (304-232 BCE; r. 273- 232 BCE). Candragupta founded the Mauryan dynasty almost exactly a hundred years before Qin Shihuangdi founded the first imperial dynasty in China, but their futures would be very different. The Qin dynasty was succeeded, with significant breaks to be sure, by one imperial dynasty after another for more than 2,000 years, until 1911, most of them ruling over most of what we now call China. After the collapse of the Mauryan dynasty, however, India remained divided through most of its subsequent history, with no regime again reaching the size of the Mauryan empire, yet with a cultural unity that surely rivals that of China, and for which political unification was clearly not a prerequisite.
Anoka, as we will see, was probably the most innovative ruler in Indian history, but, for reasons we will consider below, he was almost forgotten except in Buddhist texts. His inscriptions, the first examples of writing in India, extensive and full of interesting material, were written in a script and languages that made them soon after their creation unreadable until modern times. Anoka was not as totally forgotten as Akhenaten, but given his historical importance his absence from subsequent historical memory is remarkable. Nonetheless his presence can be sensed in all the texts that give this period such a creative role in Indian religious and political thought.
We must begin our effort to understand changes in the centuries before and after the turn of the Common Era by taking a closer look at the kingdom of Magadha. In the earliest references it is described as being beyond the pale of Vedic culture, inhabited by barbarians, but the process of expansive Sanskritization had reached it by the time of the Buddha, probably the fifth century BCE, as we have noted above. Under the rule of Bimbisara and his son Ajatasatru, Magadha became the dominant principality in the Ganges valley and developed a polity that differed significantly from earlier times. What we can thinly discern, mainly from Buddhist and Jain sources, is a new degree of centralization and the emergence of a king with enhanced powers. We have seen a long transition from chiefdoms to paramount chief doms, to an uneasy early state during the first half of the first millennium BCE. We saw that the early state depended heavily on a complex ritual system, focusing on the ruling house but allowing the participation of other aristocratic lineages, and very dependent on the alliance of Ksatriyas and Brahmins.
Sometime in the middle years of the first millennium BCE and especially clearly in Magadha, the king was able to concentrate more power in his own hands, to depend less on local notables and more on officials chosen from the royal lineage or closely dependent lineages, and to extract what have to be called taxes rather than tribute as in earlier times. The great royal rituals were still performed, but less frequently and more exclusively in the royal lineage alone. Brahmins were important and respected, but could not claim exclusive access to the sacred, with the emergence of the Buddhists, Jains, and other groups. Both kings Bimbisara and Ajatasatru were claimed as patrons of their religions in Buddhist and Jain texts, though in those same texts they are portrayed as having Brahmin advisors and as in no sense having “established” any one religion. Newly expansive Magadha was clearly less bound by older expectations and more inclined to experimentation in both political and religious realms than were earlier regimes. It was the seedbed of much that was to follow.205
Bimbisara and Ajatasatru, perhaps in the fifth century BCE (all dates are provisional), had greatly extended the domain of Magadha so that it included the entire lower Ganges valley and adjoining territory to the north and east. The Nanda dynasty, which followed and ruled through much of the fourth century BCE, extended the rule of Magadha significantly so that it reached the west coast, thus spanning the subcontinent from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea. But it was the next dynasty, the Mauryas, that created an empire that included most of the subcontinent, including parts of what are now Pakistan and Afghanistan, and excluding only the southernmost regions, and even they may have accepted a kind of tributary status relative to the Mauryas. The founder of the dynasty, Candragupta Maurya, overthrew the last of the Nandas in 321 BCE. According to tradition, Candragupta’s takeover was masterminded by his advisor Kautaliya‘206 who later became his chief minister. The authorship of the important text on rulership, the Arthasdstra, is attributed to Kautaliya. The text as we have it undoubtedly has later material, although some of it may derive from Mauryan times and even possibly from Candragupta’s chief minister. Candragupta extended the territory of Magadha, as did his son Bindusara, who completed the conquest except for the important territory to the south of Magadha, Kalinga. Bindusara’s son, Asoka, succeeded his father in 278 BCE (all these dates are approximate) after an interim in which he perhaps killed one or more of his brothers in order to obtain the throne, and it was Asoka who brought the empire to its geographical completion with the conquest of Kalinga a few years later.
We know far more about Asoka than about any ruler before him and for a long time after him due to the many rock and pillar inscriptions scattered throughout his empire in which he speaks in his own voice. The inscriptions of Asoka are the earliest surviving examples of writing in India, and some scholars believe that the earliest Indian script was invented in Asoka’s chancery. We should remember that on the northwest frontier the Indians had long been in contact with peoples-the Persians, who controlled some northwestern Indian regions under the Achaemenids, and most recently the Greeks in t
he fourth century BCE. Alexander the Great invaded the Indus Valley in 326 BCE and was succeeded by a number of small Greek states that Candragupta Maurya conquered, but Alexander’s successor in Syria and Mesopotamia, Seleucus Nicator, invaded India in 305, challenging Candragupta for control of regions that had once been under Persian control and more recently ruled by Greeks. Seleucus failed in his efforts but concluded a treaty with Candragupta in 305 BCE in which he ceded territory in return for 500 war elephants. That the Mauryan empire, the largest India had ever seen, succeeded so closely the creation of Alexander’s empire, the largest Mediterranean and Middle Eastern empire up to his time, is surely significant, as were the continuing diplomatic relations of the Mauryas with the Hellenistic successor states of Alexander. The invention of writing in India could be an example of what anthropologists call stimulus diffusion: the Mauryas did not take over a foreign alphabet but invented one of their own. Another explanation, that the Indian script was developed from the Aramaic script used as a kind of lingua franca in Persia and northwest India at the time, is perhaps more persuasive.207
Sticking only to the most reliable sources, his own words in his inscriptions, we can say several things: that Asoka at some point became an adherent of Buddhism, that his conquest of Kalinga was bloody, involving much loss of life among both combatants and noncombatants and great suffering of the civilian population, that he repented of the violence of his conquest, and that he subsequently renounced war and vowed to rule by Dhamma, not violence.208 The edicts were written in Prakrit, the spoken language com monly used in north India at the time, derived from classical Sanskrit, as was Pali, the language of the early Buddhist canon, to which it was closely related. In both Prakrit and Pali, Sanskrit “dharma” had become “dhamma.” It would be a mistake, however, to read Asoka’s Dhamma as the same as the Buddha Dhamma, as some early students of the edicts did. Although Asoka did direct some edicts to his fellow Buddhist believers, it is clear from their contents that his own Dhamma, his own teaching, which the edicts were intended to communicate, was nondenominational, so to speak, addressed equally to all believers and intended to communicate values common to all the religions of the time. In particular Asoka taught equal respect for sramanas (Buddhist monks, but also monks of other sects) and brahmanas (Brahmins), even varying which term came first in different edicts.
Asoka’s Dhamma could be seen as a form of political propaganda, though with a religious quality in its content. Anoka was surely not the inventor of political propaganda, and the rock inscriptions of Achaemenid rulers may have been the model from which those of Anoka derived. But the difference in content is significant: for example, the Behistun Inscription of the great Achaemenid king Darius 1 (549-486 BCE), which echoes the pronouncements of many rulers before him, begins “I am Darius, the great king, king of kings, the king of Persia, the king of countries.“209 Anoka, on the other hand, is relatively modest about himself, referring to himself most often merely as “the king Piyadassi (his personal name), the Beloved of the Gods.” Darius’s long inscription proceeds to recount the difficult circumstances surrounding his accession to the throne, and then at length the many conquests and particularly the violent suppression of numerous revolts and the terrible fate of the rebels, with the clear intention of warning any possible future rebels not to make the attempt. One could say that the whole inscription is drenched in blood and violence.
Virtually the only reference to warfare in Asoka’s inscriptions is his expression of remorse for his conquest of Kalinga, which appears in many locations, but not, significantly, in Kalinga itself, where the memory of the war may have left the inhabitants too scarred to hear about remorse. Asoka’s inscriptions are as devoted to peace as Darius’s were to war. For example, the Sixth Major Rock Edict says:
I consider that I must promote the welfare of the whole world, and hard work and the dispatch of business are the means of doing so. Indeed there is no better work than promoting the welfare of the whole world. And whatever may be my great deeds, I have done them in order to discharge my debt to all beings. I work for their happiness in this life, that in the next they may gain heaven. For this purpose has this inscription of Dhamma been engraved.210
Anoka expresses a concern for the health and well-being of his subjects and describes some of his good works, such as improving the roads by planting banyan trees for shade and providing wells and rest houses every nine miles so that humans and animals could be refreshed.211 But he insists that the greatest gift he has to give is Dhamma itself-
There is no gift comparable to the gift of Dhamma, the praise of Dhamma, the sharing of Dhamma, fellowship in Dhamma. And this is-good behaviour towards slaves and servants, obedience to mother and father, generosity towards friends, acquaintances, and relatives and toward sramanas and brahmans, and abstention from killing living beings … By doing so, there is gain in this world, and in the next there is infinite merit, through the gift of Dhamma.212
Although Asoka’s Dhamma is clearly indebted to Buddhism, it is intended as a general teaching, not a sectarian one. One of Asoka’s primary concerns is religious tolerance:
But the Beloved of the Gods does not consider gifts of honour to be as important as the essential advancement of all sects. Its basis is the control of one’s speech, so as not to extol one’s own sect or disparage that of another on unsuitable occasions. On each occasion one should honour the sect of another, for by doing so one increases the influence of one’s own sect and benefits that of the other, while, by doing otherwise, one diminishes the influence of one’s own sect and harms the other … therefore concord is to be commended so that men may hear one another’s principles.213
For example, nonviolence, ahimsa, an absolute principle in Buddhism, is frequently praised by Anoka, but it is a moderate nonviolence, admitting of exceptions. On the whole, animals are not to be killed for food, but in a few cases it is all right. The death penalty is still enforced for certain crimes. Even with respect to warfare, though conquest is ruled out, punishment of trou blesome forest tribes, for instance, is still a possibility. It should also be remembered that nonviolence was an increasingly general value, to be found in extreme form among the Jains, but widely affirmed in nascent Hinduism.
One central element in Asoka’s Dhamma that links it to Buddhism, though not in a sectarian way, is that it was universal. There is nothing in it about varna, about obligations arising from one’s status at birth. One must respect Brahmins as one must respect ascetics of various sorts, but that did not enjoin specific caste obligations. Non-Buddhist texts that treated dharma also had general admonitions that would apply to everyone, but they were complemented by a heavy emphasis on obligations particular to various castes. It is these latter teachings that are completely missing in Asoka’s Dhamma. Although Asoka’s Dhamma cannot be called secular-it is as concerned with future lives as with this one-it is primarily political, the basis of the kind of good society that Asoka was trying to create and that, as far as we can tell, he was at least partly successful in creating. After Kalinga his long reign was peaceful.
Asoka’s effort to spread Dhamma was not confined to inscribing admonitions. He appointed a number of officials known as dhamma-mahamattas, whose duty was to spread the teaching, not only within the realm but beyond the frontiers as well, as in the missions that were sent to Hellenistic monarchs. Only a few individuals could read the inscriptions in a society where literacy was just beginning, but gatherings were held at the sites of the inscriptions, which were read to the assembled people. As with most forms of preaching in human history, it is doubtful that many people understood or acted upon what was preached, yet the influence of Asoka’s Dhamma was more important in subsequent Indian history than we can precisely measure.
The appointment of dhamma-mahamattas is only one example of the many offices that were created under Mauryan rule. We do not, however, know how individuals were chosen for these offices and whether the criterion of merit that was so important in Chin
ese bureaucracy was institutionalized in any effective way. On the contrary, it would appear that the Mauryas, like Indian rulers before and after them, relied on particularistic criteria of kinship and lineage, and often delegated responsibility, especially in the areas beyond greater Magadha itself, to local notables. Thus in spite of Asoka’s attempt to unify his empire with his Dhamma, it remained fragile and fissile. The series of weak rulers who succeeded him saw the gradual crumbling of imperial rule, and the last of them was finally overthrown in 185 BCE by the Sunga dynasty, of allegedly Brahmin lineage, who ruled over Magadha and a considerably smaller realm than the Mauryas at their height. There are some accounts that Buddhism was persecuted under the Sungas, but it seems more likely that Buddhism was tolerated under an increasingly orthodox Brahmin regime.
In trying to understand the relation between religion and politics in India toward the end of the first millennium BCE, we have to take account of the Mauryas and particularly of Asoka, because there we have evidence that is mostly missing from other polities of the day. What we know, aside from some archaeological evidence, is mainly literary, especially Asoka’s inscriptions. Our only certain knowledge of Asoka’s polity is derived from the inscriptions themselves, which are not, of course, objective descriptions, but there are some texts that are thought to be from the Mauryan period or not long after that may also shed some light. Sheldon Pollock has written that “few questions in premodern South Asian history are more unyielding to coherent and convincing answers than the nature of political power and the character of polity,” noting that “not a single document from any royal archive has been preserved.“214 So what we have in the inscriptions and texts that have survived are representations of political imagination, of how those who wrote these texts wanted things to be seen to be or thought they ought to be, as opposed to how they actually were. Yet Pollock argues, rightly in my view, that such representations, as long as we do not take them as literal descriptions, still tell us a great deal of how educated Indians thought about their society, its problems and its
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