Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor

by Charles R. Allen

  Ashoka would have been approaching fifty when he began his stupa-building programme. It drew him into the very heart of the Buddhist Sangha and its elders, and yet the rivalries and discord within and without the Buddhist Church continued to dog his rule. In about 254 BCE a minister was despatched to sort out a dispute between the Buddhists and a sect of naked ascetics known as the Nirgranthas but made matters worse by killing some monks. Ashoka’s younger brother Tissa/Vitashoka somehow got caught up in the business and was killed. These events appear to have been the catalyst that led the emperor to summon the entire Buddhist monastic community to his Kukkutarama/Ashokarama monastery outside Pataliputra. According to the Southern tradition, it ended with the expulsion of those who refused to accept the doctrines of the more conservative elders, followed by a great council to codify what the victors of the dispute held to be doctrinally correct, after which a major programme of proselytising was started, with missionaries despatched to every quarter, including Prince Mahinda’s mission to Lanka.

  The Northern tradition has not a word to say about such a council or missionary programme, suggesting it was they who came off the worst. Since no reference to the Third Buddhist Council can be found in the Ashokan edicts it has been argued that this major event was a Southern fabrication. But there is the striking archaeological evidence of such a council in the Great Hall of columns discovered in stages by Waddell, Mookerji and Spooner beside the railway line outside Patna City. This unique structure, with its flight of wooden steps and jetty, was purpose-built outside the city as a grand assembly hall, accessible both from Pataliputra and from the surrounding countryside. It could not have housed all the supposed sixty thousand participants of the Third Buddhist Council but would have provided shelter for their representatives.

  Equally impressive is the validity of the Great Dynastic Chronicle’s tale of the missionaries sent to Lanka, the far corners of India and beyond, for how can one doubt the veracity of the names of the missionaries it lists when the named relics of several of their number were found by Cunningham and Maisey at Sanchi. Indeed, it can be argued that Sanchi hill is a memorial to the spreading of the Dharma, initially by Sakyamuni within India, then under Ashoka to the world beyond

  From the time of the Third Buddhist Council onwards the Northern accounts become seriously fractured, in marked contrast to the Lankan Great Dynastic Chronicle. For the Northern tradition, what really mattered was demonstrating Emperor Ashoka’s subordinate relationship to the Buddhists of Mathura, so he is portrayed prostrating himself before Upagupta, being helped by Upagupta in his stupa building, being led by Upagupta on his pilgrimages, supporting Upagupta’s faction through his increasingly generous offerings to the church. This reading is validated to some degree by pillar inscriptions at Lumbini and nearby Nigliva Sagar, and the royal highway of Ashokan pillars in North Bihar. The undoubted portrayals of Ashoka at Sanchi also confirm the emperor’s collecting of Buddha relics, his stupa building and his growing devotion to the Bodhi tree, one of the few areas where the two traditions are in agreement. They also lend some credence to the portrayal of Ashoka in the last phase of his life, given in the Legend of King Ashoka, as someone so obsessed with his promotion of the Sangha as to have little time for anything else.

  The Pillar Edicts, erected twenty-six years after Ashoka’s anointing, provide a counterbalance to the picture promoted in both Buddhist traditions of a ruler utterly devoted to the sponsorship of Buddhism. They show that Emperor Ashoka and his ministers presided over an administration both efficient and benevolent to a degree rarely seen before or since, glimpses of which can be seen in such reforms as the abolition of animal sacrifices, animal fights, hunting and the eating of meat (RE 1); the provision of hospitals, botanical gardens, wells and the planting of shade trees along roads (RE 2); the supply of medical aid to the border areas and among neighbouring countries (RE 2); the institution of five-year touring circuits for religious and administrative officers (RE 3); independent jurisdiction granted to governors regarding law and order, and reforms relating to stays of execution for those sentenced to death (PE 4). If all the reforms listed in the Rock Edicts were fully implemented then it can be argued that Ashokan rule was the first welfare state in history, even if the archaeological supporting evidence to date is slight. Recent surveys of the Sanchi region have uncovered evidence of an extensive dam and irrigation network dating from Mauryan times, and elsewhere Ashokan pillars and wells seem to have gone hand in hand.

  That such reforms were carried through is shown by Ashoka’s last public statement, as contained in the seventh Pillar Edict statement added to the Firoz Shah’s Lat. This is a summation of what Emperor Ashoka had achieved in the thirty-seven years of his reign. It listed the good works that he and his religious officers had carried out in the name of the Dharma and what effect this had had, concluding that what progress had been effected had been achieved by regulations and by persuasion, but chiefly through the latter. However, much as Ashoka’s personal devotion to Buddhism had grown, in matters of state he continued to maintain an even hand – ‘I have honoured all religions with various honours’15 (PE 6), and ‘My Dharma Mahamatras too are occupied with various good works among the ascetics and householders of all religions’ (PE 7) – still promoting a Dharma based on ethics rather than anything that might be described as religious practice. As in the Rock Edicts, it is public and private morality that is being promoted here, not religion or religious practice. In PE 2 Ashoka even asks rhetorically, ‘What constitutes Dharma?’ and sums it up as ‘little evil, much good, kindness, generosity, truthfulness and purity’ – to which he adds, from RE 1, ‘much self-examination, much respect, much fear (of evil) and much enthusiasm’. Not so much as a word about prayers, offerings, sacrifices, rituals or gods.

  The emperor ends PE 7 with closing words that still have the power to stir after so many centuries:

  Concerning this, Beloved-of-the-Gods says: Wherever there are stone pillars or stone slabs, there this Dharma edict is to be engraved so that it may long endure. It has been engraved so that it may endure as long as my sons and great-grandsons live and as long as the sun and the moon shine, and so that people may practise it as instructed. For by practising it happiness will be attained in this world and the next. This Dharma edict has been written by me twenty-seven years after my coronation.

  These last words were inscribed in or about the year 242 BCE, by which time Emperor Ashoka would be approaching sixty – an old man by the norms of his time.

  Ashoka’s final years were surrounded by closing darkness and confusion. All the evidence points to the emperor becoming increasingly fervent in his devotion to Buddhism and his support for the Buddhist Sangha, even to the point where it tipped over into religious mania. This overenthusiasm seems to have begun with a growing obsession with the Bodhi tree at Bodhgaya, perhaps arising from guilty feelings over his assault on the tree in the early years of his rein. The Bodhi tree looms large in every account of Ashoka’s last years. ‘His faith was particularly roused by the Bodhi tree’, declares the Legend of King Ashoka, which has the emperor declare: ‘When I looked at the king of trees, I knew that even now I was looking at the Self-Existent Master.’ The Great Dynastic Chronicle devotes folios to the process by which Ashoka selected and despatched his cutting from the Bodhi tree for his new ally King Devanamapiyatissa of Lanka, to say nothing of the manner in which the wicked queen Tishyarakshita caused the tree to wither and die – an act, of course, that leaves the newly planted Bodhi tree in Lanka as the sole living representative of Buddha’s Enlightenment.

  The last phase of Ashoka’s life begins with his staging of the pancavarsika or ‘quinquennial rainy season assembly’, which may have had its roots in pre-Buddhist festivals but nevertheless set a pattern for other Buddhist or pro-Buddhist monarchs to follow. More than eight centuries later the Chinese traveller Xuanzang witnessed just such a festival organised by the great monarch Harsha at Prayag (Allahabad), at which he gave away quan
tities of gold, silver and other gifts to the thousands of priests and monks assembled there, representing all the wealth accumulated over the previous five years. Even by Xuanzang’s Buddhist-oriented account, Harsha ensured that all religions were represented and equally treated – whereas it seems that Ashoka’s pancavarsika was exclusively for the Buddhists, in that he offers everything from his kingship to his son Kunala to the Sangha.16

  It is quite possible, of course, that the writer of the Legend of King Ashoka and Taranatha in his History overegged the Buddhist pudding, but in the absence of any hint of inclusiveness we have to assume that Ashoka acted as the Northern tradition has it. Such blatant favouritism cannot have gone down well with the Brahmans, Jains, Ajivikas and other non-Buddhist sections of the community. This favouring of Buddhism impacted most directly on the orthodox Brahmans because it was chiefly from their ranks that the Buddhist monks were drawn. Sakyamuni Buddha’s first disciples were Brahmans and this trend had continued, so that the more Brahmans who converted to Buddhism the weaker their community became. A reaction was inevitable.

  Ashoka’s first quinquennial festival ended with Ashoka mounting a special platform built round the Bodhi tree in order to bathe it ‘with milk scented with sandalwood, saffron, and camphor [poured from] five thousand pitchers of gold, silver, crystal, and cat’s eye, filled with different kinds of perfumes’ – very much as shown on the outer panel of the bottom architrave on the East Gateway of the Great Stupa at Sanchi (see illustration, p. 345). This event most probably took place in about 240 BCE and, since it was traditionally held every five years, a second such festival would have been scheduled for 235 BCE.

  But in 239 BCE Ashoka lost his wife Asandhimitra, the chief queen who had born him his beloved heir-apparent Kunala of the beautiful eyes. Her place was filled four years later – so about 235 BCE – by Tishyarakshita, who in both Northern and Southern traditions is portrayed as a wicked heretic who conspires against Buddhism. Her first act is to cause the Bodhi tree to wither. Her next is more serious, when she sets out to destroy Kunala when he rejects her advances. Her chance comes when Kunala is sent to deal with a rebellion in Taxila and she cures Ashoka’s mysterious stomach ailment. She then brings about the blinding of Kunala by the king’s supposed order, but is discovered and put to death when Kunala manages to make his way back to Pataliputra to tell his story. Kunala’s blinding makes him ineligible to rule and his son Samprati (Sampadin) becomes the heir-apparent.

  Much of this story can be dismissed as embroidery.17 The essential element seems to be that the new queen headed a non-Buddhist faction at court which opposed the Buddhist heir-apparent Kunala and which grew in strength while Kunala was away acting as governor of Taxila. The anti-Buddhists succeeded in blinding Kunala but were subsequently crushed, resulting in the execution of the queen and the break-up of the anti-Buddhist faction. In support of this thesis, Xuanzang provides a detail not found in other versions of the story, which is that having executed his queen, Ashoka ‘reproached his ministers and denounced his assistants at court, who were dismissed, or banished, or relegated, or executed, and many powerful and wealthy families were deported to the desert to the north-east of the Snowy Mountains’.

  These events may have been contemporaneous with some bizarre happenings at Pataliputra, as the fading emperor sought to stage a second pancavarsika festival, only to be thwarted by his ministers. The Legend of King Ashoka more or less sums it up in one paragraph:

  Ashoka had already built the 84,000 dharmarajikas [stupas], and had made a donation of 100,000 pieces of gold to each of them. Then, he had given 100,000 thousand to the place of the Buddha’s birth, to the Bodhi tree, to the place where he set in motion the Wheel of the Dharma, and to the site of his parinirvana. Then he had held a great quinquennial festival and spent 400,000 on the entertainment of 300,000 monks … Also, he had offered to the arya sangha … 400,000 pieces of gold.18 Thus, his total gift to the Teaching of the Blessed One amounted to 96 kotis [1 koti = 10 million]. Presently, however, Ashoka became ill, and thinking that he would soon pass away, he became despondent.

  The sick emperor’s determination to send yet more gold coins to his Kukkutarama/Ashokarama monastic centre seems to have been the last straw for his ministers. They turned to the new heir-apparent, Prince Samprati, who ordered the state treasury to cease disbursing any more funds to the king’s order. This was a blatant act of lese-majesty, a direct challenge to the authority of the emperor amounting to treason. But Ashoka was too weak to respond and no one came to his aid. He had, to all intents, ceased to rule. So Samprati became the de facto ruler of Magadha and the country, backed by Radhagupta and the other ministers – but opposed by the Buddhist Sangha, which had much to lose.

  It was against this backdrop of growing dissension that the dying emperor passed his last days, as Xuanzang recounts in the course of describing his visit to the ruins of Ashoka’s Kukkutarama monastery: ‘When King Aoka was ill on his deathbed, he knew that he was incurable and he intended to give up his gems and jewels for the performance of good deeds. But his influential ministers had seized power and would not allow him to do what he desired.’19 There follows the pathetic story of the cherry plum fruit, with Ashoka declaring that he now has sovereign power over just half a fruit and orders it to be offered to the monks of Kukkutarama, where it is mashed and served up as soup. Then in his last moments the emperor presents the whole earth to the Sangha, has this declaration set down in a document, seals it with his teeth and expires.

  In all accounts, Ashoka’s demise and his subsequent cremation by his ministers is described in the briefest terms and with no protestations of sorrow. In the Northern tradition the minister Radhagupta appears as the key player, resolving the problem of Ashoka’s last donation by taking four kotis from the state treasury and presenting them to the Sangha in order to buy back the earth. The ministers then consecrate Samprati as the new king.

  There are serious weaknesses in this Northern scenario, such as the continuing presence of Radhagupta, the chief minister, who manages to preside over Ashoka’s claiming of the throne as well as his deposition forty-one years later. It is equally hard to believe that Kunala’s son Samprati could have played any active part in this deposition since he must have been a minor at the time. What is more credible is the anti-Buddhist faction making some form of reparation to buy off the Buddhists.

  However, the most surprising element here is the absolute silence of the Southern tradition regarding the circumstances surrounding the death of their favourite monarch, the Wheel-turning friend of Lanka who brought the Dharma to their island. The Island Chronicle, the Great Dynastic Chronicle and Great Dynastic Chronicle gloss have absolutely nothing to say on Ashoka’s demise or the succession. This silence is deafening. At the very least, it suggests dismay and grave disapproval of whatever did happen, which can only have been a major setback to the Buddhist cause.

  Equally revealing is the disagreement among the Puranas over who succeeds Ashoka. The only names which appear twice and in the same order are Dasharatha and Samprati (as Samgata) – and all we know for certain is that Dasharatha was the author of the three Ajivika cave dedications in the Nagarjuni Hills. Perhaps crucially, The Lives of the Jain Elders names Samprati as Ashoka’s grandson and describes him as a convert to Jainism who ruled from two capitals: Pataliputra and Ujjain.

  The best reading of these events is that in 235 BCE the Buddhist crown prince Kunala, having voiced his disapproval of the new queen and her anti-Buddhist faction, was sent away to govern Taxila, leaving his infant son Samprati behind as the usual hostage. In that same year Ashoka began to organise his second quinquennial festival in the face of growing opposition led by his queen with the tacit support of his ministers, increasingly concerned at his draining of the state treasury to support the Buddhists. Fearing for his own future, Prince Kunala made his own bid for power – a rebellion that failed, leading to his blinding and removal from the line of succession in favour of his infan
t son Samprati, but also to the break-up of the queen’s anti-Buddhist faction and her execution. All these events besmirched Ashoka’s name as a righteous king of Dharma and were damaging to his son Kunala’s reputation as a Buddhist saint and so had to be excised from the Buddhist record. It would explain why in three of the Puranas Kunala appears as Ashoka’s successor, his length of rule unspecified.

  The death of the great emperor was followed by a free-for-all as his sons competed to wrestle his throne from the appointed heir, the minor Samprati. The initial winner was probably Dasharatha, who may have been appointed regent during Samprati’s minority, but whose support for the Ajivikas made him unpopular both with the Buddhists and the Brahmans. Dasharatha ruled for eight years at best, at which point a second power struggle ensued, with the Buddhists rallying round Ashoka’s chosen heir, the teenage Samprati, who let them down by turning to the Jains, resulting in his being ousted from Pataliputra, possibly by his cousin or nephew Shalishuka, and forced to set up his new capital in Ujjain.

  Whether this was part of a Brahman backlash or not, it seems pretty certain that within a decade of Ashoka’s death his mighty empire had fragmented into as many as four or five regional kingdoms each ruled by his sons or grandsons, among them Jalauka in Kashmir, who reversed his father’s policies in favour of Shaivism and led a successful campaign against the Graeco-Bactrians, themselves seeking to take advantage of the power vacuum in north-west India to reclaim Taxila.