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Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s23: Early life

Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s23

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Early life

c11.s23.1

Of the birth and early life of Aśoka we hear very little even from tradition. According to *Divyāvadāna*, his mother was Janapadakalyāṇī (Subhadrāṅgī in other versions), the lovely daughter of a Brahman of Champā, who was kept out of her rights for some time by the intrigues of the other queens of Bindusāra, but succeeded ultimately in winning the king’s favour and bearing him two sons, Aśoka and Vigatāśoka. Some modern scholars would make Aśoka the son of the Greek princess, the daughter of Seleucus, who became the wife of Bindusāra according to the terms of peace between the founder of the Mauryan empire and the Hellenistic ruler of Western Asia³. True, a mixed descent for Aśoka might not have evoked such violent disapproval in his time as in later days ; and it may be taken to explain Aśoka's adoption and propagation of Buddhism and his close relations with Hellenistic rulers and even the disputes at the accession of Aśoka to the throne ; but there is no clear evidence in favour of it.

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³ K. H. Dhruva—*JBORS* XVI (1930) p. 35 n. 28; Tarn, *The Greeks in Bactria and India*, p. 152.

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Tradition associates Aśoka with the viceroyalties of Taksha-śilā and Ujjayinī, and we know from the inscriptions¹ that these were held by princes of the royal family. The beginning of young Aśoka's viceroyalty of Ujjayinī was marked by romance ; when he halted at Vidiśā on his way to the provincial capital, he fell in love with Devi, the beautiful daughter of a merchant, and made her his wife; the two children born out of this marriage, a son and a daughter, were Mahinda and Saṅghamittā, who having renounced the world attained celebrity as the authors of the conversion of Ceylon to Buddhism². It is possible that Aśoka founded a Saṅghārāma and erected the stūpa at Sāñchī because of the pleasant associations he had with the birthplace of his beautiful Devi.

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¹ Separate RE. I. AA—BB.

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² MV. XIII 8—11 ; DV. VI 15—17. As Mahinda was twenty years of age in the sixth year after his father's coronation (DV. VI 21—2 ; VII 21—2 and 24), his birth would fall ten years before Aśoka's accession, and this gives us some idea of the duration of Aśoka's political apprenticeship under his father. Smith (Aśoka, pp. 48, 50) accepts Hiuen Tsang's statement that Mahendra was a brother, not son, of Aśoka, and follows Oldenberg in doubting the real existence of Saṅghamitrā.

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When Bindusāra fell ill and was near his end, Aśoka left Ujjayinī and went over to Pushpapura (Pāṭaliputra) and took charge of the administration of the empire. Legend³ implies that this was done against the wish of Bindusāra who had other ideas regarding succession, and there was an interval of four years between the end of Bindusāra's rule and the formal abhisheka of Aśoka from which event his regnal years are counted in the inscriptions. It seems probable that Aśoka's accession was not uncontested, but stories of wholesale destruction of all his brothers are given the lie direct by the inscriptions of the reign.

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³ Ceylon legends contain two different statements—one that Aśoka killed ninety-nine brothers born of different mothers before becoming sovereign (MV. V 20 ; DV. VI 21—2) and the other that after his father's death he caused his eldest brother to be slain before seizing the sovereignty of Pushpapura, (MV. V. 40). The Divyāvadāna says that when Bindusāra, lying in his deathbed, wanted to anoint his son Susīma, his ministers substituted Aśoka in his place ; and when the dying monarch discovered the trick and became angry, Aśoka established his right by successfully calling upon the gods to give him the diadem if it was his by right. (p. 372—3). But elsewhere in the same work Aśoka speaks of his attaining sovereignty by killing his enemies (pp. 387, 400).

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