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Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s24: Adoption of Buddhism

Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s24

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Adoption of Buddhism

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Like his father Bindusāra, Aśoka was an adherent of the Vedic religion at the commencement of his reign. According to the *Dīpavaṃsa*, Aśoka entered upon a religious quest and began ‘searching where truth and where falsehood was’ among the sects; he sent for the exponents of all the various doctrines, offered them presents, and propounded questions. None of the answers he got satisfied him until one day standing at the window of his palace he saw the Samaṇa Nigrodha going along the road for alms and felt attracted to him. Nigrodha was the posthumous son of the elder brother of Aśoka, Sumana, whom Aśoka had slain to clear his way to the throne. Aśoka adopted Buddhism as his religion as the result of Nigrodha's sermon to him. This was in the fourth year after the king's coronation¹.

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¹ MV. v. 34-8 and 62-72 abridges and slightly alters DV. vi 25-99. The later account omits the religious quest part of the story and lays stress on the ‘want of self-control’ of the Brāhmaṇas at the distribution of food, which led the king to send for the other sects. The *Divyāvadāna* (xxvi) gives quite another account of Aśoka's conversion. It describes a prison which the king established in Pāṭaliputra under the control of Girika and the tortures to which persons who entered it were subjected; Samudra, a merchant prince of Śrāvasti, turned monk, entered the prison and by his miraculous powers, escaped the usual fate of persons who went in there. Aśoka heard of this, and witnessed more miracles performed by the *Bhikshu* and was converted (pp. 374-82) See also Watters, ii 88-91. Senart's remarks at IA xx p. 235 seek to account plausibly for the earlier date for the conversion given by the Sinhalese chronicles.

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In truth, the conversion of Aśoka is connected with the first historical event of the reign of which the inscriptions speak, the conquest of Kalinga, and this is given out by Aśoka himself in the thirteenth Rock Edict. He says that he effected the conquest of Kalinga eight years after his anointment; he deplores the slaughter, death and deportation of people involved in the conquest of an unconquered country, and affirms that 150,000 men were deported, 100,000 were slain in battle, and many times that number died; he lays stress on the injury to the beloved ones of the virtuous Brāhmaṇas and Śramaṇas; out of repentance (*anuśochana*) for these evils of conquest, he began to study Dhamma with zeal, to love Dhamma and to devote himself to the instruction of people in Dhamma. The stages of Aśoka's spiritual progress we may infer from the hints scattered in other inscriptions¹. In the opening sections of the Minor Rock Inscription he says that for over a year after he had openly proclaimed himself a Buddha-Śākya (Maski) he was not very zealous ; then he visited the Sangha and by the time he issued this inscription he had been exerting himself with zeal for over a year in the realisation of Dhamma. The total period between the original conversion and this record is given as two years and a half. The visit to Sambodhi at the end of ten years after the *abhisheka* (eighth Rock Edict) may well have signalised the initial conversion of the emperor to Buddhism.

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¹ These have been discussed by Hultzsch p. xlvi ; also Senart IA xx pp. 229-31.

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Thus Aśoka effected the conquest of Kalinga in the ninth and tenth years after the *abhisheka* (c. 256-5 B.C.) ; in the eleventh year, on account of his remorse at the thought of the incidents of the Kalinga war, he adopted Buddhism as his creed, undertook the pilgrimage to Gayā (Sambodhi) became an *upāsaka* and gave up the time-honoured practice of going out on hunting and pleasure tours.² Not much happened for one year after that ; then he paid a visit to the Sangha, derived instruction, became more zealous in the cause of Dhamma, and began to live apart as a celibate ; after 256 nights spent in this manner³, he caused a record of his experiences to be made along with an exhortation to all to exert themselves likewise in the good cause (Minor Rock Edict.). About the same time (253 B.C.) he declared his mind to the Sangha in a letter which was engraved on a rock in Bairāṭ (Rajaputana). In this letter Aśoka says that his faith in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha is well known to the monks and proceeds to pick out and name seven texts from the scriptures¹ which he desires the monks and nuns should hear frequently expounded and should meditate upon; this, in his opinion, is calculated to secure the long duration of the true Dhamma. At the same time he presented to the Ājīvaka monks two caves with polished interiors in the Khalatika mountain, now known as Barābar hills, in South Bihar. Seven years later Aśoka presented a third cave-dwelling in the same hills, but the inscription does not say to whom.²

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² RE. VIII C-Hultzsch p. 15 and n. cf. also MV. xi 34.

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³ Fleet's suggestion (JRAS. 1910 p. 1308) that 256 represents the number of years after the *nirvāṇa* may yet hold, if we relate it not to the *pari-nirvāṇa* of Buddha, but to his enlightenment—which seems not unlikely considering that Aśoka signifies his conversion at the outset by a journey to the spot where the Buddha attained knowledge.

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¹ For the identification of these texts see IA xli (1912) pp. 37—40 and JRAS 1913 p. 387; also Smith's Aśoka pp. 156—7 and Hultzsch, p. 174 n2. The texts are (1) Vinaya Samukasa—Buddha's first sermon at Benares (Udāna V. 3) (2) Aliya Vasāni—Aṅguttara ii. p. 27 (3) Anāgata-bhayāni—Aṅguttara iii p. 103, sutta 78 (4) Muni-gāthā—Sutta-nipāta i. 12, p. 36 (5) Moneya-sute—ib. iii. ii pp. 131—4 (6) Upatisa-pasine—ib. iv. 16, pp. 76—9 (7) Laghulo-vāde—Majjhima Nik. ii, 2, 1 Vol. i. p. 414 (references to PTS editions.) See also Winternitz, Hist. of Ind. Liter. Calcutta, 1933 ii, App. iii. pp. 606—9. See also the Chapter on 'Religion' post.

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² The Ājīvakas might have been ekadaṇḍi worshippers of Śiva earlier than Gosala whose disciples they are generally represented to be. Charpentier in JRAS 1913 pp. 669—74.

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