Dharma King

Through a careful analysis of Ashokan inscriptions as a body of texts, Patrick Olivelle, professor of Sanskrit and Indian Religions at the University of Texas at Austin, reimagines a new, nuanced portrait of the Indian king Ashoka Maurya (c. 304–232 BCE) in his new book, Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King. In a departure from prior attempts to draw on ancient Buddhist (Pali and Chinese) or Hindu texts (Sanskrit) to recover Ashoka’s biography, Olivelle sets out to create a portrait of the king through a study of his inscriptions and artifacts. He overcomes the limitations of inscriptional data through his imaginative reconstruction of the king’s historical context on the basis of contemporary or slightly later texts and secondary scholarship.

What distinguishes Olivelle’s book from recent works on King Ashoka is his reliance on Ashokan inscriptions, including rock and pillar edicts, donative inscriptions, and pillar capitals. During his reign, Ashoka had these proclamations carved in stone at sites across his kingdom, which covered most of the Indian subcontinent. Though some inscriptions were lost, many survive to this day and provide a window through which moderns can view the king’s life and time. Read in tandem with texts from a slightly later period (Indica, Arthashastra, Apastamba Dharmasūtra), these inscriptions place Ashoka in his proper context, or as close as is possible from this great distance.

Olivelle notes that despite the endurance of his proclamations, Ashoka’s political endeavors were short-lived. Over the centuries, Ashoka was imagined and reimagined by Buddhists, who viewed him as an idealized ruler, and by Brahmins, who generally viewed him as an antihero. Though imaginative re-creations of the ancient king continue to this day, the last major reenvisioning occurred in 1950, when Ashokan symbols were adopted as the emblems of modern India under the leadership of the new nation’s first prime minister, J. L. Nehru.

One of the novelties of the book lies in how Olivelle traces Ashoka’s growth as a human being, writer, scholar, and king/emperor. Olivelle raises numerous questions in each chapter and acknowledges that some of these cannot be answered fully through inscriptions alone. He therefore works with educated guesses and backs these up with additional evidence or secondary scholarship. Another intriguing feature of Olivelle’s method is gaining insights into Ashoka’s thinking through the subtext or silences, things that are either not explicitly mentioned or are merely referred to in the inscriptions.

A great deal has been written about Ashoka and his dharma, which should not be exactly identified with the Buddha’s dharma. Ashoka’s conception, as described by Olivelle, was wider and more inclusive of his diverse subjects. This dharma included aspects of all the religions under his rulership, leading Olivelle to describe the king and his rule as “proto-secular.”

Despite this nod to secularity, there is consensus in recent scholarship that Ashoka was an emperor who was also a Buddhist practitioner. (It should also be noted that Ashoka’s inscriptions tell a story different from the legends of his reign—stories passed down through generations of Buddhists.) Olivelle agrees with this formulation and evaluates Ashoka’s kingship over the vast geographical expanse (Jambudvipa) through a detailed analysis of bureaucracy, administrative structure, army, and so on. What is innovative here is the frame of “imagined community” that Olivelle adopts to conceptualize Ashoka’s depiction of the empire as a family, with himself as father, and of the varied regions under the umbrella of his empire as a unified whole. This required Ashoka to build a common lingua franca, comprehensible to a broad section of his administration as well as the larger society. This effort led to the creation of Brahmi script, which is the mother of all later Indian scripts including Devanagari, used for Hindi today, and used by Ashoka in his inscriptions. Olivelle’s masterful analysis of the various types of edicts charts Ashoka’s growth as a writer-composer as well as his use of a retinue of scribes, editors, translators, and administrators to create these communications.

What distinguishes Olivelle’s book from recent works on King Ashoka is his reliance on Ashokan inscriptions, including rock and pillar edicts, donative inscriptions, and pillar capitals

Though Ashoka’s idea of dharma has survived on very few architectural pieces, these inscriptions have fascinated laypeople and scholars alike. Most commonly situated in places known for folk festivals or pilgrimages, inscriptions were also placed within or near Buddhist monasteries and pilgrimage routes. While discussing the meaning and symbolism of pillar capitals, Olivelle points to what he calls Ashoka’s “strategic ambivalence,” when languages and symbols are used in such a way that they could be understood differently by different groups of people. This fluidity of meaning may have been deliberate and beneficial for Ashoka to simultaneously convey his personal preference for Buddhism as well as his universal philosophy of dharma to both the general populace and administrators.

All of Ashoka’s efforts to be a good Buddhist king were mentioned in a scattered manner across several inscriptions, from which Olivelle carefully crafts his narrative. In Minor Rock Edict 1, for example, Ashoka clearly articulates his efforts to become a better upasaka (lay follower).

Further evidence is found in Ashoka’s pilgrimage to Bodhgaya and Lumbini, his donations to monasteries, and his transformation of royal tours into dharma tours to Buddhist sacred sites. In presumably later inscriptions, the king was even confident enough to suggest which Buddhist texts monks and nuns should read to deepen their understanding, and warned monastics to avoid schisms and maintain correct behavior to remain in good standing in the sangha. Ashoka was clearly concerned about maintaining the health of Buddhism, which required internal unity and the prosperity of the sangha. His patronage of Buddhist sites and the strategic placement of pillars around these areas reflect Ashoka’s aspiration to be an exemplary lay follower, and as the king, he must have been a powerful role model for his subjects. This may explain why Buddhists came to imagine him as the model Buddhist king, and indeed, often still cast him in this role.

Despite being a Buddhist practitioner, Ashoka doesn’t refer to Buddhism in any discussion of his moral philosophy, his dharma, which, as mentioned above, transcended sectarian divides. What made Ashoka imagine this new philosophy, and how did this affect his polity? Olivelle attributes Ashoka’s conception of the dharma to the king’s desire for personal self-cultivation and socially committed action for his subjects. This utilitarian dharma was a set of moral behaviors that focused on ahimsa (nonviolence), as well as proper attitude, regard, and comportment toward self, family members, friends, slaves, servants, and diverse religious figures.

Ashoka, despite his reputation as a zealous missionary, understood and accepted the religious diversity within his domain.

Aimed at a broad cross section of society, these rules can be found in most religions of the time, which shows that Ashoka, despite his reputation as a zealous missionary, understood and accepted the religious diversity within his domain. He was aware of other religious groups such as Jains, Ajivikas, Brahmins, and others he encountered on tours of his kingdom. Drawing upon his Buddhist faith, he may have felt the need to create a zone of tolerance where everyone had the opportunity to be their best selves. As he does with Buddhist monks and nuns, Ashoka also calls on the pasandas (religious practitioners of other religions) to pay close attention to their respective dharmas and to coexist without bickering or denigrating others.

Olivelle calls this new, universalist idea Ashoka’s “cult of dharma,” which relied on the scriptures written on stones and pillars. This cult became the basis of a civil religion aimed at uniting and constituting a people, a people who would have a sense of belonging to a common polity on the basis of dharma. Moral and ethical guidelines became the philosophical basis of a righteous, prosperous, and peaceful state in ancient India.

What is commendable is how Olivelle traces the changes in language and the content of inscriptions to construct a coherent narrative of Ashoka’s growth and transformation into the ideal king. Olivelle’s past works and translations informed this book substantially, and his scrupulous attention to Ashokan inscriptions opens this old corpus to a new frame of analysis that provides insights into the biography of Ashoka and his creation of a “proto-secular” state in ancient India. This nonsectarianism may also explain why Nehru and B. R. Ambedkar were inspired to adopt Ashokan symbols and ideas in the imagination of the modern Indian nation.

In the last decade, Ashoka has been invoked time and again by political parties in the state of Bihar. These recent appropriations of Ashoka, entangled in discussions of caste, sectarianism, and politics, are merely the latest signs of how Ashoka’s memory and legacy live on in contemporary India, as he does in the Buddhist tradition.