Ashoka: the emperor who wrote his remorse in stone

Ashoka was a son of the emperor Bindusara; his birth year is not recorded, and c. 304 BCE is only an estimate. He came to the throne around 268 BCE, after a succession that Buddhist chronicles later painted as bloody. The picture of a cruel young prince, “Chandashoka”, comes from those legends written centuries afterwards, and historians read it with caution.

What is not legend is the Kalinga war in the eighth year of his reign, around 260 BCE, against the coastal kingdom in today's Odisha. Ashoka described it himself in Rock Edict XIII: a hundred thousand killed, a hundred and fifty thousand carried away, many more dead of what followed, and the emperor's own regret for it. Few rulers in any age have left that admission in public stone.

His turn to Buddhism was gradual rather than a single conversion: by his own inscriptions he became a lay follower and grew more committed over the following years. Buddhist tradition credits him with the Third Buddhist Council and with missions abroad, and by the same tradition his son Mahinda and daughter Sanghamitta took the teaching to Sri Lanka. He died around 232 BCE, and after his death the dynasty declined quickly.

The edicts are Ashoka speaking in the first person, as Devanampiya, “beloved of the gods”, the title in the Devanagari line above. Most are in Prakrit in the Brahmi script; in the north-west he used Kharosthi, and in today's Afghanistan Greek and Aramaic, so that each region could read him in its own letters.

The dhamma they preach is not doctrine but conduct: obedience to parents, generosity to Brahmins and ascetics, restraint in killing animals, wells and shade trees along the roads, care for people and beasts alike. Above all, respect for other sects: whoever praises his own faith and disparages another's, one edict says in effect, harms his own. Ashoka supported Buddhism first, but his edicts urge generosity to Brahmins and ascetics of every sect, and he donated caves in the Barabar hills to the Ajivikas.

The line quoted above, “all people are my children”, is from the separate edict at Dhauli, near Bhubaneswar, set up in Kalinga itself. For many centuries nobody could read any of it; James Prinsep deciphered the script only in 1837–38, and the forgotten emperor came back into history.

The easiest place to stand in front of Ashoka is Sarnath, about 10 km north of Varanasi, where the Buddha gave his first sermon. Ashoka raised a polished sandstone pillar here; its capital of four lions back to back, with wheels on the abacus below them, is now the centrepiece of the Archaeological Museum beside the ruins. India adopted it as the state emblem on 26 January 1950, and the 24-spoked wheel from the same capital sits in the middle of the national flag.

The museum is closed on Fridays and photography inside is not allowed, so the lions are seen only with your own eyes. The broken shaft of the pillar itself still stands where it was found, in the excavated park.