Buddhist India c19.57

c19.57

That is all. There is not a word about God or the soul, not a word about Buddha or Buddhism. The appeal is made, in apparent confidence that the statements are self-evident, to all the subjects of the empire. Under what conditions would such a state of things have been possible? Had there been then anything new or strange in this view of life (which now seems so strange to a European reader) there would have been phrases in the Edicts striving to meet the natural objection that must certainly have arisen. There is nothing of the kind. It follows that the doctrine, as an ideal, must have been already widely accepted, though men did not always act up to it. It is exactly as if, in a country already Christian, the king should issue proclamations calling on the people, in this point or in that, to act up to the recognised ideal of the Christian life. Asoka, precisely as in the parallel case of Constantine, embraced a cause so far successful that it seemed on the verge of victory. And it is not at all unlikely that reasons of state may have had their share in influencing Asoka, just as they certainly did in the case of Constantine.¹