Chapter 88. Ashoka and the Dhamma State: Buddhism as Imperial Ideology

The third Maurya emperor, Ashoka (reigned c. 268–232 BCE), is the first ruler in the library’s sources to turn a śramaṇa ethic into a programme of government. His rock and pillar edicts are the oldest readable Indian documents, his missions carried Buddhism to Sri Lanka, and Buddhist tradition remembers him as the model “wheel-turning” king. The sources read him in two ways. Some see a repentant conqueror who renounced war. Others see an exceptionally skilled ruler who used a moral vocabulary to bind a multi-ethnic empire together. This chapter sets out both readings. It then follows the Ashokan model to its modern heir, Theravada Buddhism as a state religion in Sri Lanka, where religion, ethnicity and armed separatism became entangled [Wikipedia: Ashoka; Wikipedia: Ashoka’s policy of Dhamma].

The Maurya background and the Kalinga war

Armstrong traces the dynasty’s religious eclecticism to its origins. Chandragupta Maurya, “a vaishya who may have come from one of the tribal republics”, had “no strong links with Vedic religion”. He favoured the Jains, his son Bindusara promoted the Ājīvikas, and Ashoka, who came to the throne in 268, patronised the Buddhists, while his brother Vitashoka became a monk. Armstrong notes that the Pali sources claim that before his conversion Ashoka “had been a cruel, self-indulgent ruler, who managed to win the throne only by killing his other brothers” [Armstrong, The Great Transformation, #82303, ch. 9 “Empire (c. 300 to 220 BCE)”].

The Romanian political-communication scholar Bogdan Teodorescu gives the canonical figures. In 261 BCE Ashoka “launches the war with the kingdom of Kalinga”. The defeated enemy left “a hundred thousand dead” on the battlefield and “more than a hundred and fifty thousand people were deported”. On the timing of the conversion Teodorescu writes: “Three years after the victory over the kingdom of Kalinga, Ashoka converts to Buddhism.” He adds that “there are sources which state that Ashoka had gone over to Buddhism two years before the battle of Kalinga, but the effective acceptance of Buddhist philosophy and the awakening came three years after the battle” [Teodorescu, Cinci milenii de manipulare, #10924, section on India, “Prajapati…” (parts 5 and 47)]. Ashoka’s own Thirteenth Major Rock Edict gives the same figures in the first person: “A hundred and fifty thousand people were deported, a hundred thousand were killed and many times that number perished. … the Beloved of the Gods felt remorse” [Wikipedia: Ashoka’s policy of Dhamma, “Text of the edicts”].

Armstrong, who dates the conquest of Kalinga to 260 rather than 261, takes the edict seriously but also questions it. “Ashoka probably exaggerated the casualty figures: the Mauryan army was only sixty thousand strong, so it is hard to see how it could have killed a hundred thousand Kalingans.” She asks why he did not “simply repatriate” the deportees, and suggests that “he may have wanted to deter rebellion by emphasizing the magnitude and ruthlessness of his victory”. She adds that “he certainly did not abjure all warfare … and never disbanded his army” [Armstrong, The Great Transformation, #82303, ch. 9]. Teodorescu says the opposite on repatriation: after his awakening Ashoka “ceases every war of conquest, returns to their homes the deportees who were still alive and compensates them” [Teodorescu, Cinci milenii de manipulare, #10924, part 47].

The edicts and the policy of Dhamma

Wikipedia’s summary of the edicts lists the main measures of Dhamma. Rock Edict I banned animal sacrifice and certain festive gatherings. Edict II provided medical treatment for men and animals, roads, wells and tree planting. Edict V records the creation in the twelfth year of the reign of the dhamma-mahāmattas, officers “appointed … to look after the interests of all sects and religions and spread the message of Dhamma”. Edicts VII and XII plead for tolerance among the sects, and Edict VIII replaced royal hunts with dhamma-yātrās, or moral tours. Edict XIII calls for “conquest by Dhamma instead of war”. The same article notes that the mahāmattas “gradually developed into a type of priesthood of Dhamma with great powers and soon began to interfere in politics” [Wikipedia: Ashoka’s policy of Dhamma]. Armstrong quotes the Twelfth Edict: “concord is to be commended, so that men may hear one another’s principles” [Armstrong, The Great Transformation, #82303, ch. 9].

Historians disagree about the death penalty. Armstrong writes that “capital punishment remained an option” [Armstrong, The Great Transformation, #82303]. The Encyclopedia of World History agrees that he “did not abolish the death penalty”. It adds that his morality officers were allowed “even to pry into the households of his relatives” [Encyclopedia of World History, #5204, “Mauryan Empire”]. The popular Story of the Silk Road calls Ashoka the creator of “the world’s first welfare state” and says he was “abolishing the death penalty” and offering amnesty. The same account says that decades of philanthropy “had virtually bankrupted the empire”, so that his ministers refused his dying wish to donate his remaining goods to the Buddhist order [Story of the Silk Road, #63188, “Ashoka” feature by Hareth Al Bustani].

The Wikipedia article on Dhamma also covers the historiographical dispute. V. A. Smith and D. R. Bhandarkar equated Dhamma with Buddhism. Romila Thapar and Nayanjot Lahiri argue that Dhamma “stands apart from Buddhist ideas, even while being informed by them”. On their reading it was a deliberate, non-sectarian ideology for an empire that “could not have been controlled by an army alone” [Wikipedia: Ashoka’s policy of Dhamma, “Polity” and “Interpretations”]. Armstrong agrees that it “did not mention the uniquely Buddhist doctrine of anatta … or the practice of yoga” [Armstrong, The Great Transformation, #82303].

Teodorescu: Dhamma as a communication campaign

Teodorescu’s book is a history of political manipulation through religion, propaganda and symbol. He puts Ashoka in a series of rulers who used the sacred to rule, alongside Akhenaten and Urukagina of Lagash, and he reads the edicts as a communication campaign. The edicts, “carved on stupas or ceremonial pillars, proclaimed Ashoka’s social reforms, his policies, and the advice he gave his subjects”. Looking back across 2,500 years, he writes, “the communication campaign launched by Ashoka was not accidental”, because in most edicts the king insists that as many people as possible should “know, understand and finally apply” them. He calls the existence of a dedicated “structure for promoting government policy” that preaches “relatively abstract concepts” rather than the religion itself “an absolute novelty of the Old World” [Teodorescu, Cinci milenii de manipulare, #10924, parts 7 and 49]. Teodorescu does not deny the conversion; his frame concerns how it was used.

Script, medicine and a fringe reading

The edicts also matter as physical evidence. Ferrara notes that “aside from the yet undeciphered carved seals found among the urban ruins of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa … the earliest Indian script comes from Ashoka”. He adds that the Indus signs bear little resemblance to “the Brahmi script that emerged nearly fifteen hundred years later with the Ashoka inscriptions” [Ferrara, Sacred Bliss, #66945, ch. 1 “Vedānta, Sādhu Priests, and the ‘Lord of Bhang'”].

The surgical history in Flint’s Trauma credits Ashoka with state medicine on the battlefield. In the summary of the section “Historical Trauma Care: India and Rome”, King Ashoka “developed a formal trauma care system for his armies after the Kalinga conquest”. It adds that “Ashoka’s edicts and the book Artashastra document an ambulance service with surgeons and support staff”, and that “Sushruta may have lived just before Ashoka” [Flint, Trauma: Contemporary Principles and Therapy, #34260, “Historical Trauma Care: India and Rome”].

Corrado Malanga’s 1999 article on Mohenjo-daro gives a non-mainstream reading. It belongs to “protoufology”, which argues that ancient India knew vimanas and atomic weapons. Malanga writes that “the Asoka empire was ruled by new scientists who had written new books on many other domains of science”. He says these books “were not accepted, because the Asoka soon converted to Buddhism, rejected every idea of belligerence and feared that their scientific discoveries” might be put to warlike use [Malanga, Las guerras estelares de Mohenjo-Daro, #60072]. None of the historical sources cited in this chapter mentions such a suppression.

Missions abroad and the Theravada lineage

The Dhamma article records that Ashoka “sent many missions to propagate Dhamma … to far off places like Egypt, Greece and Sri Lanka” [Wikipedia: Ashoka’s policy of Dhamma]. According to the Sri Lankan chronicles Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa, Ashoka’s son Mahinda converted King Devānampiya Tissa during a royal hunt at Mihintale. His sister Saṅghamittā founded the order of nuns and brought a sapling of the Bodhi tree. The same article reports a historians’ view that Mahinda’s departure was “more of a political motive”: Ashoka was afraid of a succession war [Wikipedia: Mahinda (Buddhist monk)].

Sorajjakool dates the split between those who held that enlightenment was “for all” (Mahayana, “the great vehicle”) and the “Hinayana (the small vehicle)” to about 250 BCE. He follows Theravada as it spread to “Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos” [Sorajjakool, World Religions for Healthcare Professionals, #35015, “Buddhism: Theravada and Mahayana Traditions”]. Van Voorst identifies the Pali canon as the scripture of “South Asian Theravada Buddhism”. He draws the doctrinal line clearly: in later devotional Mahayana, “the older idea of self-redemption characteristic of Theravada Buddhism gave way to redemption through the grace of this Buddha” [Van Voorst, Anthology of World Scriptures, #63227, Buddhism chapter].

Axial closure and the afterlife of the Ashokan model

Armstrong puts Ashoka at the end of an era. “The Indian Axial Age occurred after the disintegration of the Harappan civilization and ended with the Mauryan empire.” She calls his experiment “brave” but says it “failed”: after his death in 231 “the dhamma lapsed”. She rejects the theory that non-violence “emasculated the army”: “It is more likely that the empire simply outgrew its resources.” Even so, “in Buddhist tradition, he is a chakkavatti, a universal king”, and Guru Nanak and Gandhi later revived “the ideal of concord” [Armstrong, The Great Transformation, #82303, chs. 9–10]. One political-science volume warns that Ashoka’s empire “can be, and has been, portrayed as a golden age of imperial unity under enlightened rule, and this interpretation can just as readily be dismissed as a founding myth of modern India” [The Balance of Power in World History, #5211].

In Sri Lanka the link between throne and sangha became constitutional. Article 9 of the 1978 constitution requires that the Republic “shall give to Buddhism the foremost place” [Wikipedia: Freedom of religion in Sri Lanka]. Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism draws on the Mahāvaṃsa. That chronicle portrays the Buddha sanctifying the island as Dhammadīpa, and it tells of the war of King Dutugamunu against the Tamil king Elara “for the restoration and glory of Buddhism”. Wikipedia reports that some scholars see the chronicle as having supplied a justification for religious violence [Wikipedia: Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism].

Sam Harris raises the Sri Lankan case in a footnote. He grants that the suicide bomber of his opening scene “could very well be a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the separatist organisation in Sri Lanka that has carried out more acts of suicide terrorism than any other group”. He notes that this group “is often offered as a counter-example to the claims that suicide terrorism is a product of religion” [Harris, Sfârşitul credinţei, #21476, ch. 1 note 2]. The Tigers were a Tamil separatist movement, not a Buddhist one. Wikipedia calls the LTTE “secularist” and records its bombing of the Temple of the Tooth and the Sri Maha Bodhi tree, two of the holiest Buddhist sites [Wikipedia: Freedom of religion in Sri Lanka].

Key points

• Teodorescu dates the Kalinga war to 261 BCE and Ashoka’s effective conversion to three years after the victory. He reads the edicts as a deliberate political communication campaign [#10924].
• Ashoka’s Rock Edict XIII expresses remorse for 100,000 dead and 150,000 deported. Armstrong suspects exaggeration and notes that Ashoka never disbanded his army [#82303].
• Dhamma combined tolerance of all sects, restrictions on animal killing, welfare works and a new corps of dhamma-mahāmattas, who became a quasi-priesthood with political influence [Wikipedia: Ashoka’s policy of Dhamma].
• Ferrara notes that apart from the Indus seals the earliest Indian script is Ashoka’s Brahmi. Flint credits Ashoka with a military trauma and ambulance service, and Malanga’s fringe thesis claims Ashokan science was suppressed [#66945; #34260; #60072].
• Mahinda’s mission planted Theravada in Sri Lanka. Van Voorst contrasts Theravada self-redemption with later Mahayana redemption by grace [#63227; Wikipedia: Mahinda (Buddhist monk)].
• Armstrong sees the Indian Axial Age ending with the Maurya empire, and the Ashokan ideal surviving as the cakravartin model [#82303].
• In modern Sri Lanka Buddhism holds the constitutional “foremost place”. Harris cites the separatist Tamil Tigers as the standard counter-example in the debate over religion and suicide terrorism [#21476].