Ashoka the Great

by Keuning, Wytze

  ASHOKA THE GREAT

  Copyright © Wytze Keuning • J.E. Steur 2010

  Published 2010 by

  Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd.

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  New Delhi 110 002

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  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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  For

  All the Teachers of India

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Preface

  Ashoka: The Wild Prince

  Book I

  1 The Wild Prince

  2 Jivaka’s Sacrifice

  3 The Emperor’s Decision

  4 The Gandiva Bow

  5 The Throw Of The Chakra

  6 Rohini’s Despair

  7 Dark Powers

  8 Dangerous Enchantment

  9 Devaka’s Moans Sweep Through The Woods

  10 The Interrupted Sati

  11 The Torch That Lit The Revolt

  12 The House Of Susmila

  13 The Vengeance Of The Crippled Priest

  14 The Dance Of The Leper Children

  15 Catastrophe Awaits

  16 Brahma’s Benevolent Smile

  17 Mahadeva Ashoka

  18 Doubt

  19 The Two Viceroys

  20 The Sage In The Hermitage

  21 The Gods Require A Sacrifice

  22 Wearing The Most Glorious Blossom

  23 The Shattered Serai

  24 Gandharva In Sanchi

  25 Sadavaha’s Soul On Mount Kailasha

  26 Silence, Sanhita!

  Appendix and Notes by Wytze Keuning

  Endnotes

  Ashoka: The Wise Ruler

  Book II

  1. The Blood That Tolerance Demands

  2. Shiva’s Thunderbolt

  3. The Mistake

  4. The Ordeal

  5. Two Spies

  6. Sacrifices

  7. An Adept In Rudra’s Divine Knowledge

  8. I, Refuse

  9. The Third Maurya

  10. The Penitent Salya

  11. The Decision Of The Gods

  12. The Delicate Blue Scarf

  13. The Other Salya

  14. Brothers

  15. Cunning And Revenge

  16. Regulate

  17. Rani Kuravaki

  18. Jungle Fire

  19. The Sacred Maharajah

  20. Longings

  21. The Game of The Rani-choice

  22. The Little Arhat

  23. The Way of The Buddha

  24. Then One Throws Higher

  25. Dark Portents

  26. The Black Necessity

  27. The Quiet

  28. The Light Without Shadow

  29. Alone, The Great Journey

  Appendix: The Edicts of Ashoka

  Endnotes

  Ashoka: The World’s Great Teacher

  Book III

  PART 1: THE BEAUTIFUL EYES OF THE PRINCE

  1. And Ever Flowed And Flows The Ganga

  2. The House With Too Many Doors

  3. Poison

  4. Antidote

  5. Drowning In The Beautiful Eyes Of The Prince

  6. That Which Makes You A Brahmacharin

  7. Kama As The First Seed Of The Spirit

  8. Trishna

  9. The Young Judge

  10. Eternal Doubt

  11. The Wheel Of The Teachings

  12. The Youngest Rani

  13. Buddha’s Mighty Word

  14. The Unseen Friend

  15. Kunala Keeps Silent 837

  PART 2: THE YOUNGEST RANI

  16. The Viceroy Of Taxila

  17. Savitri

  18. Demons

  19. The Driving Force

  20. The New Kumara

  21. Uncertainty

  22. The Assignation

  23. The Lipi

  24. The Arduous Journey

  25. Justice

  26. The Feast Of Purification

  27. What Becomes, Perishes

  Endnotes

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The process of translating has been an adventure in which several people participated over several years. I would like to thank all the helpers and proofreaders for their contributions, in particular Nel Witholt, without whom there would never have been made a start with the translation. Then, Jagdeesh Prasad and Swaroop Rani Rao, without whose devoted effort the books would not have come to light. There are many more people who stimulated me during a certain phase in the translation process. Amongst them, I would like to mention in particular: Ahmed and Amin Khankashi, Nitin Parab, Mark Antrobus, Sharmila Shaligram, Harish M. Belani and especially Dr Ananda W.P. Guruge. To all of them: my heartfelt Thanks!

  PREFACE

  In the days of the Mauryan dynasty, Indian society was a highly organised bureaucracy, following the polity of the Arthashastra ... (This work on statecraft was) promoting the power of the King without any real regard for the wellbeing of the people or any consideration whatever for ethical values.

  Ashoka was fulfilling his duty as a king as his Enlightened vision perceived it … He hoped that: compassion, liberality, truthfulness, purity, gentleness and virtue would spread among mankind … For all his idealism Ashoka was a realist …He would not tolerate crime but he would be humane towards criminals … His compassion was counterbalanced with sternness.

  — Abraham Eraly, Gem in the Lotus:

  The Seeding of Indian Civilisation

  shoka, the great Emperor of India, 3rd Century bce, well-known as the King of Peace, must have been born around 300 bce, lived for about seventy years, and ruled for nearly forty.

  After a terrible war against the Kalingas – what is modern-day Orissa – where over one hundred thousand people were killed and even more were wounded or taken captive and deported, Ashoka showed such deep remorse, that he decided to fully embrace Buddhism and to forswear forever the wars of aggression. In its place he established his vision of ‘conquering of righteousness’, the victory of ‘Dharma’. Dharma as Buddha’s Dhamma: the system of the universal laws of life by humaneness and righteousness, the basis of any religion. Without Ashoka Buddhism would not have become what it is now. From a small sect, split up in even smaller ones, it could grow into a world religion and so he has kept Buddha’s enlightenment aflame for the seekers of today.

  From Ashoka’s early years there exists some well-documented information, in particular from southern sources, since it was his son Mahindra and daughter Sanghamitra, who brought Buddhism to Sri Lanka, from where it could spread all over South East Asia. Other traces he left were his famous edicts, carved on rocks and pillars, spread all over India. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Indian and Western scholars began numerous research endeavours on these Edicts. It was, however, not until the early twentieth century, that the ‘king of the edicts’, Devanampiya Pyadasi, was identified to be, without doubt, Ashoka. The picture of his
later years comes mainly from these edicts.

  Ashoka The Great, chronicles the life of Emperor Ashoka. It is a fictional biography; more accurately it is called historical fiction. The original Dutch version was a trilogy, published separately in 3 volumes. The trilogy was written between 1937–1947 by a Dutch scholar Wytze Keuning in Groningen in the Netherlands. These three volumes – Ashoka: The Wild Prince, Book I; Ashoka: The Wise Ruler, Book II and Ashoka: The World’s Great Teacher, Book III – are now brought together and presented in this single volume Ashoka The Great.

  Wytze Keuning, the author, started his career as a young teacher in a primary school in the late nineteenth century. It was in those days when teachers were full of zest to elevate the uneducated classes to a higher level, to make all talents bloom. He must have been a truly classic, old-fashioned, all-round schoolmaster of a kind I have been fortunate enough to experience myself in my childhood. Our preschool teacher would open the school day at the piano and we, little kids, would sing our hearts out, unaware of the agony of a war happening around us. Growing up, I witnessed the incredible love and devotion those teachers could show in order to make children interested in new discoveries of science or the wonders of nature. Wytze Keuning’s first books, in the early twenties, were written for the older primary schoolchildren of the 6th and 7th standard, giving them fascinating stories about the life of birds and bees and other such magic, in the country’s different biotopes. In his free time he studied piano and volunteered to play organ. So he is remembered by his ten-year old grandson, prior to his passing at the age of 81: the grandfather who always played the piano, accompanied on the violin by grandma, she herself once upon a time a teacher too.

  Where did this interest in Ashoka come from? It is not only in India that Ashoka became recognised in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as a unique King. The discovery of the edicts fascinated the entire western world, in particular the teachers. Ashoka’s humanistic ethical approach, as shown in the edicts, was something very much in line with their ideology. Needless to say that Ashoka became a beloved role model for many a teacher.

  But what motivated the author to give up his school career as a headmaster in 1937, to decide to live on a modest pension and devote himself totally to the theme of the Ashoka books? This remains a subject of speculation. What we do know is that the trilogy was written in a tumultuous phase of history, when the world was facing the threat of a second epic war; this certainly influenced the author. It might even have felt to him as a spiritual assignment, as if it was his mission to awaken people to the message of Ashoka’s life purpose: the prevention of war. By the time the first two manuscripts were completed, the country had already been invaded and the author was eager to have the books published, which required the consent of the occupiers. Seeking and obtaining such consent, was considered by quite some people as an act of collaboration with the aggressors. The author’s difficult but steadfast choice to have the books published, nevertheless, tells something about his drive and character, the way he portrays Ashoka: single-minded, strong and unblemished, as the deep spiritual seeker of truth.

  Ashoka The Great begins with Ashoka’s teenage days, when his father sends him instead of the presumed Crown Prince, his older half-brother Sumana, as Commander to quell an uprising in the West of the empire in Taxila – near what is now Islamabad in North Pakistan.

  In Ashoka: The Wild Prince, Book I, we see in Ashoka, quite in contrast to his older brother, Sumana, a true warrior, uninterested in wanton court life, preferring to hone his skills as a warrior, to engage in deep philosophical discussions with his teachers. All is noted by his father, Emperor Bindusara, who then decides to send Ashoka to suppress the revolt in Taxila, much against the wishes of the Brahmin priestly coterie and the machinations of the court. It is now that Ashoka begins his life’s journey. His firm denial of darkness, unreason and chaos created by priests is praised and so is his courage and his ability to take swift decisions that are harsh yet sound.

  In Ashoka: The Wise Ruler, Book II, we see how Ashoka, as heir to his father’s throne, becomes the fair but iron-fisted king of a vast empire. But we find that he is much more than an Emperor, he is also a man of deep compassion and indomitable courage in dealing with blood feuds. We also see the upheaval in his life caused by the Kalinga war and his evolution towards Buddhism.

  In Ashoka: The World’s Great Teacher, Book III, we see the culmination of his journey in his true experience of the deep wisdom of Gautama the Buddha. Filled with compassion, he rules his kingdom according to Buddhist principles.

  Ashoka and Kunala: The final volume of the trilogy goes more deeply into the relationship between Ashoka and his son Kunala. For a long time I thought this fascinating story to be the imagination of the author. Reading, though, Vincent A. Smith’s Asoka (1890) account and the detailed information of Ananda Guruge’s Asoka, The Righteous, A Definitive Biography (1993), I discovered that the events were recounted in the old – highly mythologised – tales of Chinese pilgrims who had visited Buddhist monasteries between the fifth to seventh century and were kept in ancient scripts.

  We know from Ashoka’s edicts that until four years before his death they showed an optimistic trust in the success of the spreading of Dharma by his successors. Then everything stopped. What happened then? It remains speculation, but from what old scholars collected on myths, it appears that Wytze Keuning composed the last Book of the trilogy. It is like disclosing an old family secret, of which people participating in it have no idea, but later generations get the explanation, and with that the understanding.

  The third and final book of the trilogy was published in 1948, three years after the world-war. With all the effort directed towards rebuilding the devastated country it was evidently not the right time to interest the people in the reflections of a King of Peace of long ago. When the author died in 1957 the books were almost forgotten.

  It is through a series of peculiar events that, some fifty years after their first publication, they came my way. At that time my love for India was blossoming largely because of the great wisdom that one of its spiritual masters had to offer a seeking soul. How did I encounter them?

  It was in the late eighties, while in India, the name ‘Ashoka’ came through to me and started fascinating me. It had to do with the extraordinary experiences I had that year when, for the first time, I had been in the radiance of my enlightened master.

  Ashoka, who was Ashoka? So many strange names in India, but all of a sudden I saw ‘Ashoka-Ice-cream’, there were ‘Ashoka’-hotels. He was clearly a historical figure, but from what era? There was no internet yet in those days, something that could have made my search easier. Back in the Netherlands I was too occupied with daily work to pay much attention to the name. I almost forgot about it, until later that year, browsing around in a bookshop, I saw a book on world history and – out of curiosity – looked up the name Ashoka. I felt so excited to find two columns on the Emperor of India from the third century bce, that I felt compelled to buy the voluminous book, as if it contained precious information for me. Not too long after, visiting an old friend from my student days, I came across the first two volumes of Wytze Keuning on her bookshelves. ‘A Dutch book on Ashoka?’ ‘They are very special books,’ she replied to my surprised query. ‘They are the only books I read and reread. They come from the library of my grandparents. All their books went to my cousins but at least I have these ones,’ she added with childlike satisfaction, as if she had received the greatest treasure of all. I asked her if I could read the books and she said: ‘Certainly, take them with you. I am curious to know how you will like them.’ She was in her early fifties and had for most of her life been working as a lawyer. The books were still with me when, half a year later, the dreadful news came, that she was found, killed, in her own house. Her death made the books even more precious to me. It felt as if I had a legacy to protect.

  While reading the elaborate narration of Ashoka’s life one might
wonder who the author could be, as he seemed to know so much about India. Of the incredible amount of detailed information woven into the stories: was it historically accurate or was it mere fiction? It took me years to find out, collecting books on Ashoka, wherever I could find. The second volume of the trilogy ends with the Kalinga war. I wanted to read the last volume and find out what happened to Ashoka after that war. The books were no longer available for sale anymore but in the local library they still were to be found. The librarian told me that the author had never been to India and had been a teacher in my own hometown, Groningen.

  Soon after, a friend suggested that Wytze Keuning could be the father of his former medical professor Keuning, who was retired but still living in the city. I knew a relative of his and enquired about the possibility, but I was told he could not be the one. It is amazing how little even a relative knew about this author. The professor was indeed the son, and I discovered that the books were written almost around the corner from where I was living. This all increased my feelings that I had to do something with these books.

  It was, though, not until I found the last comprehensive study on Ashoka by Dr. Ananda W.P. Guruge (Asoka, The Righteous, A Definitive Biography, 1993), that I discovered that whatever was known about Ashoka for certain was woven into the stories of the books. Then the last doubts I may have had were erased. These books had to be translated. The question remained: How did Wytze Keuning get all this information. The old professor, his son, could not tell. His father had written a few novels in the local vernacular; in these they could recognise him: ‘That was Father!’, but the Ashoka trilogy? The family had not the slightest idea. They had still kept some books the author had used. It was literature on Buddhism and geography, mainly in German and French, not directly related to the Mauryan days. There was one book on Ashoka in English, of Radha Kumud Mookerji, published in 1928. All together it gave scarce information and no clue to the obviously wide knowledge of the author.

  The original version of Ashoka The Great was written in a very outdated Dutch, and in a style of courtesy – the Thou-form – which makes it hardly readable for people of today. But once in it, one feels easily drawn, as if you are an onlooker at the scenes yourself. It, indeed, is the kind of book for rereading; every time one does, one recognises deeper layers. The story is not just about a great king whose life choices greatly influenced world history, but also about the struggle of any spiritual seeker, anywhere in the world, in whatever era of time. Ashoka’s quest and moral dilemmas are as alive now as they were in his days. The author’s wide grasp of so many aspects of ancient Indian culture remains a mystery, not just for his relatives, but for anyone who reads it. Whether historical truth or metaphorical truth, it is opening our eyes to what is happening in the world, right now.