II. THE PHILOSOPHER-KING
Ashoka—The Edict of Tolerance—Ashoka’s missionaries—His failure—His success
Chandragupta’s successor, Bindusara, was apparently a man of some intellectual inclination. He is said to have asked Antiochos, King of Syria, to make him a present of a Greek philosopher; for a real Greek philosopher, wrote Bindusara, he would pay a high price.30 The proposal could not be complied with, since Antiochos found no philosophers for sale; but chance atoned by giving Bindusara a philosopher for his son.
Ashoka Vardhana mounted the throne in 273 B.C. He found himself ruler of a vaster empire than any Indian monarch before him: Afghanistan, Baluchistan, and all of modern India but the extreme south—Tamilakam, or Tamil Land. For a time he governed in the spirit of his grandfather Chandragupta, cruelly but well. Yuan Chwang, a Chinese traveler who spent many years in India in the seventh century A.D., tells us that the prison maintained by Ashoka north of the capital was still remembered in Hindu tradition as “Ashoka’s Hell.” There, said his informants, all the tortures of any orthodox Inferno had been used in the punishment of criminals; to which the King added an edict that no one who entered that dungeon should ever come out of it alive. But one day a Buddhist saint, imprisoned there without cause, and flung into a cauldron of hot water, refused to boil. The jailer sent word to Ashoka, who came, saw, and marveled. When the King turned to leave, the jailer reminded him that according to his own edict he must not leave the prison alive. The King admitted the force of the remark, and ordered the jailer to be thrown into the cauldron.
On returning to his palace Ashoka, we are told, underwent a profound conversion. He gave instructions that the prison should be demolished, and that the penal code should be made more lenient. At the same time he learned that his troops had won a great victory over the rebellious Kalinga tribe, had slaughtered thousands of the rebels, and had taken many prisoners. Ashoka was moved to remorse at the thought of all this “violence, slaughter, and separation” of captives “from those whom they love.” He ordered the prisoners freed, restored their lands to the Kalingas, and sent them a message of apology which had no precedents and has had few imitations. Then he joined the Buddhist Order, wore for a time the garb of a monk, gave up hunting and the eating of I meat, and entered upon the Eightfold Noble Way.31
It is at present impossible to say how much of this is myth, and how much is history; nor can we discern, at this distance, the motives of the King. Perhaps he saw the growth of Buddhism, and thought that its code of generosity and peace might provide a convenient regimen for his people, saving countless policemen. In the eleventh year of his reign he began to issue the most remarkable edicts in the history of government, and commanded that they should be carved upon rocks and pillars in simple phrase and local dialects, so that any literate Hindu might be able to understand them. The Rock Edicts have been found in almost every part of India; of the pillars ten remain in place, and the position of twenty others has been determined. In these edicts we find the Emperor accepting the Buddhist faith completely, and applying it resolutely throughout the last sphere of human affairs in which we should have expected to find it—statesmanship. It is as if some modern empire had suddenly announced that henceforth it would practice Christianity.
Though these edicts are Buddhist they will not seem to us entirely religious. They assume a future life, and thereby suggest how soon the scepticism of Buddha had been replaced by the faith of his followers. But they express no belief in, make no mention of, a personal God.32 Neither is there any word in them about Buddha. The edicts are not interested in theology: the Sarnath Edict asks for harmony within the Church, and prescribes penalties for those who weaken it with schism;33 but other edicts repeatedly enjoin religious tolerance. One must give alms to Brahmans as well as to Buddhist priests; one must not speak ill of other men’s faiths. The King announces that all his subjects are his beloved children, and that he will not discriminate against any of them because of their diverse creeds.34 Rock Edict XII speaks with almost contemporary pertinence:
His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King does reverence to men of all sects, whether ascetics or householders, by gifts and various forms of reverence.
His Sacred Majesty, however, cares not so much for gifts or external reverence, as that there should be a growth of the essence of the matter in all sects. The growth of the essence of the matter assumes various forms, but the root of it is restraint of speech; to wit, a man must not do reverence to his own sect, or disparage that of another, without reason. Depreciation should be for specific reasons only, because the sects of other people all deserve reverence for some reason or another.
By thus acting a man exalts his own sect, and at the same time does service to the sects of other people. By acting contrariwise a man hurts his own sect, and does disservice to the sects of other people. . . . Concord is meritorious.
“The essence of the matter” is explained more clearly in the Second Pillar Edict. “The Law of Piety is excellent. But wherein consists the Law of Piety? In these things: to wit, little impiety, many good deeds, compassion, liberality, truthfulness, purity.” To set an example Ashoka ordered his officials everywhere to regard the people as his children, to treat them without impatience or harshness, never to torture them, and never to imprison them without good cause; and he commanded the officials to read these instructions periodically to the people.35
Did these moral edicts have any result in improving the conduct of the people? Perhaps they had something to do with spreading the idea of ahimsa, and encouraging abstinence from meat and alcoholic drinks among the upper classes of India.36 Ashoka himself had all the confidence of a reformer in the efficacy of his petrified sermons: in Rock Edict IV he announces that marvelous results have already appeared; and his summary gives us a clearer conception of his doctrine:
Now, by reason of the practice of piety by His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King, the reverberation of the war-drums has become the reverberation of the Law. . . . As for many years before has not happened, now, by reason of the inculcation of the Law of Piety by His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King, (there is) increased abstention from the sacrificial slaughter of living creatures, abstention from the killing of animate beings, seemly behavior to relatives, seemly behavior to Brahmans, hearkening to father and mother, hearkening to elders. Thus, as in many other ways, the practice of the Law (of Piety) has increased, and His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King will make such practice of the Law increase further.
The sons, grandsons and great-grandsons of His Sacred and Gracious Majesty the King will cause this practice of the Law to increase until the eon of universal destruction.
The good King exaggerated the piety of men and the loyalty of sons. He himself labored arduously for the new religion; he made himself head of the Buddhist Church, lavished gifts upon it, built 84,000 monasteries for it,37 and in its name established throughout his kingdom hospitals for men and animals.38 He sent Buddhist missionaries to all parts of India and Ceylon, even to Syria, Egypt and Greece,39 where, perhaps, they helped to prepare for the ethics of Christ;40 and shortly after his death missionaries left India to preach the gospel of Buddha in Tibet, China, Mongolia and Japan. In addition to this activity in religion, Ashoka gave himself zealously to the secular administration of his empire; his days of labor were long, and he kept himself available to his aides for public business at all hours.41
His outstanding fault was egotism; it is difficult to be at once modest and a reformer. His self-respect shines out in every edict, and makes him more completely the brother of Marcus Aurelius. He failed to perceive that the Brahmans hated him and only bided their time to destroy him, as the priests of Thebes had destroyed Ikhnaton a thousand years before. Not only the Brahmans, who had been given to slaughtering animals for themselves and their gods, but many thousands of hunters and fishermen resented the edicts that set such severe limitations upon the taking of animal life; even the peasants growled at the command that “chaff must not be set on fire along with the living things in it.”42 Half the empire waited hopefully for Ashoka’s death.
Yuan Chwang tells us that according to Buddhist tradition Ashoka in his last years was deposed by his grandson, who acted with the aid of court officials. Gradually all power was taken from the old King, and his gifts to the Buddhist Church came to an end. Ashoka’s own allowance of goods, even of food, was cut down, until one day his whole portion was half an amalaka fruit. The King gazed upon it sadly, and then sent it to his Buddhist brethren, as all that he had to give.43 But in truth we know nothing of his later years, not even the year of his death. Within a generation after his passing, his empire, like Ikhnaton’s, crumbled to pieces. As it became evident that the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Magadha was maintained rather by the inertia of tradition than by the organization of force, state after state renounced its adherence to the King of Kings at Pataliputra. Descendants of Ashoka continued to rule Magadha till the seventh century after Christ; but the Maurya Dynasty that Chandragupta had founded came to an end when King Brihadratha was assassinated. States are built not on the ideals but on the nature of men.
In the political sense Ashoka had failed; in another sense he had accomplished one of the greatest tasks in history. Within two hundred years after his death Buddhism had spread throughout India, and was entering upon the bloodless conquest of Asia. If to this day, from Kandy in Ceylon to Kamakura in Japan, the placid face of Gautama bids men be gentle to one another and love peace, it is partly because a dreamer, perhaps a saint, once held the throne of India.