c.264 BC: Ashoka the Great is converted to pacifism by Nigrodha

Ashoka the Great, who was to be the last Mauryan emperor in India, succeeded to the throne c. 268 BC after a protracted and bloody dynastic struggle against rival claimants. The details of these conflicts cannot be verified, and may have been exaggerated subsequently by Buddhist writers seeking to emphasize the contrast between the pre-Buddhist Ashoka and the later convert, but it seems likely that there was much bloodshed; even if he did not kill precisely 99 of his 100 brothers, or personally behead 500 enemies, the Mauryan empire was undoubtedly a great prize of war, and fighting must have been bloody (the exploits of the converted Ashoka were also suspiciously immense: the scribes claimed he built 84,000 monasteries and 84.000 stupas)

The aftermath of the Battle of Kalinga – in which Ashoka either crushed a revolt or annexed a neighbour – undoubtedly affected him deeply. According to his own testimony, the war cost the lives of over 100,000 Kalinga men, women and children, and also 10,000 of his own men, and he had inscriptions carved into rocks and onto pillars erected throughout the Mauryan empire proclaiming his edicts (the significance of the pillars was only rediscovered in the 19th century), explaining that his remorse led to embrace of the practice of ‘dhamma’, the way of the Buddha, a way consisting of compassion to others, to all life.

The importance and unique nature of the edicts is undisputed: here a monarch addresses his people, tells them he has been a bad man, and now wishes to become moral, and to spread his influence through good works rather than evil acts, such as war. Capital punishment was abolished, prisoners were treated kindly, and laws were passed to protect animals. The empire would co-exist peacefully with its neighbours, and justice would be fair. The edicts are also the earliest recorded writings on Buddhism.

It has long been accepted by scholars that there are effectively two Ashokas, the Ashoka of history and the Ashoka of Buddhist scripture. Both are present in the edicts, but how and when Ashoka became a Buddhist remains unconfirmed. One commonly repeated story is that after the Battle of Kalinga he met the novice Buddhist monk Nigrodha, who converted him with a sermon on ‘heedfulness’, and although it does seem that there was no dramatic conversion – according to the edicts he had begun studying Buddhism years previously – it seems reasonable to suppose that a good teacher persuaded the emperor to finally embrace Buddhism and become as an edict says, a ‘lay follower of Buddhism’. Both history and Buddhist scripture place the final embrace of religion after Kalinga, and though we do not have transcripts of their meeting, some sort of an encounter with a Buddhist scholar seems certain, and that scholar may well have been a bright novice called Nigrodha.

What Happened Next

Ashoka has been described by Richard Gombrich as ‘the most important Buddhist layman in history’, Buddhism was to all but die out in India, and only revived under the British in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was British scholars who returned to India knowledge of its greatest king (Ashoka was not finally confirmed as the author of the edicts until 1915), and the wheel of Dhamma carved on one of his great pillars now appears in the centre of the Indian flag. Thanks to Ashoka, Buddhism spread far and wide in the years of his reign (which ended about 239 BC). He sent missionaries to all the known world (even possibly to Britain), and the religion made a significant impact outside of India, most notably perhaps, in Sri Lanka Thailand and China. HG Wells wrote of Ashoka: ‘In the history of the world there have been thousands of kings and emperors who called themselves ‘their highnesses,’ ‘their majesties,’ and ‘their exalted majesties’ and so on. They shone for a brief moment, and as quickly disappeared. But Ashoka shines and shines brightly like a bright star, even unto this day’.