Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s36: Religious policy
Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s36
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Religious policy
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So far we have viewed Aśoka as ruler, administrator and statesman. We must now turn to a consideration of the evidence of the inscriptions on his attitude to Buddhism and its consequences to the people, the state, and to Buddhism itself. At the time of Aśoka's accession when he was still a votary of the orthodox Brahmanical faith, Buddhism was doubtless the most important among the various sects that flourished outside its pale and competed with one another for popular acceptance and royal patronage. The Saṅgha was from the beginning an organised brotherhood with a well-established tradition of its own already fixed by the authority of two General Councils; the bulk of the canon had come into existence in some form and was awaiting the finishing touch that Tissa gave it under Aśoka's patronage by the composition of the Kathāvatthu. The erection of stūpas and the worship of the Buddhas who had preceded Gautama had come into vogue. Senart first pointed out the striking parallelism between the ethical ideas of the Aśokan edicts and those of the Dhammapada and demonstrated that it extended to the terms and phrases employed by both in similar contexts; they may both be taken therefore to mark one stage in the development of Bauddha doctrine and ethics. Hultzsch has argued, however, that as Aśoka's inscriptions do not yet know anything of Nirvāṇa, they must be taken to reflect an earlier stage in the development of Buddhist theology or metaphysics than the Dhammapada¹. But it is highly improbable that the conception of nirvāṇa which occurs in the earliest strata of the canon was unknown to Buddhism in the days of Aśoka and was developed later. The truth is that Aśoka refrained studiously from introducing into his edicts any of the fundamental tenets of the Buddhist faith—such as the Four Sacred Truths, the Chain of Causality, and the Noble Eight-fold Path, besides the Nirvāṇa, all conceptions which must have been fully developed long before the time of Aśoka. This omission, together with the repeated references to the doctrine of ṛṇa (debt), to svarga and to happiness in the other world as the reward of good deeds done here, has misled some to assert that Aśoka never accepted Buddhism as his personal faith, but continued to remain all through his life what he was at its beginning—a follower of the Vedic religion. Others have hailed Aśoka for this very reason as a reformer of Buddhism who, being determined on propagating it not only in his own empire but beyond its borders, set about adapting it to suit the new requirements. On this view Buddha's religion was in its earlier phase too restricted and monastic in its outlook, too puritanical and too cold in its reasoning and its individualism; by simplifying it, by virtually inaugurating the cult of the stūpa, and the worship of relics, Aśoka introduced a more catholic spirit into the church; indeed these were elements alien to the creed of the Founder, but they enabled the church to cast its net wider among all races and all classes of society; and the simple principle of sound behaviour repeated often in the edicts, the Dharma of the inscriptions, is purely ethical in its content and universal in its appeal. Aśoka turned Buddhism from a dry academic pursuit of the path of knowledge to a colourful and emotional religion of devotion with a wide popular appeal. Such a view of Aśoka's work errs by attributing much too conscious a purpose to the great emperor, and by seeking to focus into his reign the entire development of Mahāyāna Buddhism on the one side and the transition on the other from Jñānamārga to Bhaktimārga, which after all had perhaps no place as such in the history of early Buddhist development; it also exaggerates the academic and doctrinal side of primitive Buddhism and overlooks its strongly ethical character.
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¹ p. liii. See also Bagch on the development of the Canon in the Chapter on Religion *post*.
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After all, the inscriptions themselves are the best guide to Aśoka's attitude to Buddhism; and a study of these documents shows decisively that Aśoka's approach to Buddhism was that of a profound humanist; it was practical, pragmatic, and intensely ethical. The tragic war against Kalinga stirred his humanity to its depths; he felt drawn to the creed already well known for its ethical and humanitarian character. Progress in the new way of life was slow at first, but soon Aśoka developed a greater zeal; he visited the Saṅgha and gained instruction in the Faith; he went on a pilgrimage, in due course, to the spots hallowed by the Master's presence, and commemorated his visits by gifts, monuments, foundations, inscriptions. The worship of Buddhas and of their relics, enshrined in stūpas was already known and practised; when the great Mauryan emperor accepted the Buddha's faith as his own, the vast material resources of an extensive empire were pressed into the service of that creed, and there ensued an enormous increase in the numbers of stūpas and vihāras, because the emperor naturally did all he could to spread the symbols of his faith all over his empire, and his example was followed by others who were near to him and naturally accepted his lead. But of any attempt on Aśoka's part to secure converts to Buddhism as such or to reform that faith by introducing fresh features into it in order to render it more acceptable to the populace, there is no sign whatever. In fact Aśoka is at some pains to mark off his innovations from the rest of his work where he was only following the established tradition (*porāṇā pakiti*), breathing fresh life into it and adapting it to his wider aims for the moral upliftment of the people. The greatest of Aśoka's innovations, that for which he seems to claim the most credit, is that he rescued the ideal of Dharma from the relative neglect into which it had fallen and placed it in the forefront of national life, making it the touchstone of the whole of his life's work. This ideal was more ethical and social, than religious ; though the energy with which Aśoka pursued its propagation was the direct result of his having accepted Buddhism as his personal religion, the ideal itself was the common ground on which all Indian creeds met. Aśoka himself says in the Seventh Rock-Edict : ‘All sects desire both self-control and purity of mind’. In the sphere of formal religion, Aśoka makes, it clear that he did not mind what a man's particular creed was ; but he did require that all should cultivate mutual respect, should live in peace and friendliness, and should cultivate habits of social good conduct. Aśoka bent the entire machinery of the state towards the practical realization of the ideal of good life among men within his empire, and to the extent possible even beyond its borders ; and his chief claim to statesmanship lies in his strenuous endeavour to discover the widest possible basis of agreement attainable among all the sections of his subjects and to build his policy on that basis. Aśoka was the one ruler before Akbar who faced the problem of Indian national unity, and he came much nearer success than Akbar because he had a better understanding of human nature, and instead of seeking to invent a new common faith or compel everybody to adopt the faith he had accepted as his own, he took the established order for granted and struck the road along which there was the best chance of healthy and ordered development. He never departed from his rule of tolerance, and the only two instances where he appears to have done so—the prohibition of animal sacrifice and the deprecation of tiresome rituals—are really particular cases of the general promotion of *ahiṃsā* which commanded widespread assent.
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Let us now turn to details and consider the content of Aśoka's Dharma and the means he employed for its propagation. The method of publishing and popularising administrative orders and royal proclamations by having them engraved on rock-faces was well known to the imperial administration of Persia under the Achaemenids, and Aśoka's adoption of the same method for the propagation of Dharma—he calls his inscriptions Dharma-lipis—was doubtless inspired by familiarity with that practice. The preamble of many of Aśoka's edicts, often repeated in the body of edicts themselves to introduce important statements, viz. ‘Thus speaks king Devānāmpriya Priyadarśin’, and the abrupt changes in the style of address from the third person to the first, are strongly reminiscent of the Achaemenid inscriptions; the words *dipi* and *nipiṣṭa* of Aśoka's edicts are evidently taken from the Ancient Persian language; Tushāspa who, as we learn from an inscription of Rudradāman, was Aśoka's governor of Girnār, was doubtless a Persian, and might be, there were several other Persian officials like him in Aśoka's service particularly in the North-West which had been under Persian occupation for a considerable time before the coming of Alexander. The Kharoshṭhī alphabet and the Persepolitan capital of the Aśoka columns also came from Persia¹.
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¹ Hultzsch p. xlii.
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The fourteen Rock-Edicts together with the two Kalinga edicts, and Seven Pillar Edicts are mostly given to descriptions of the different aspects of Dharma in accordance with the programme Aśoka placed before himself when he issued the Minor Rock-Edict (Rūpnāth). In that edict, the first record of the reign issued very soon after the king began to be zealous in the practice of Buddhism and the propagation of Dharma, Aśoka claims that good results had already attended his efforts, and gods had begun to mingle with men in Jambudvīpa as they had never done before—a statement which remains something of an enigma. Two interpretations have been suggested : one by Smith—that the practice of Dharma raises men to the level of the gods ; the other, which seems better, by Hultzsch who explains the statement in the light of the fourth Rock-Edict which mentions ‘religious shows at which Aśoka had exhibited to his subjects in *effigie* the gods whose abodes they would be able to reach by the zealous practice of Dharma’¹. Aśoka then proceeds to say that his success has been the fruit of zeal (*prakrama*) and exhorts all persons of whatever rank, high or low, to practise the like zeal and attain heaven in due course ; he records his resolution to increase Dharma greatly, and to avail himself of rock faces and stone pillars for engraving his message of Dharma on them ; finally he orders his provincial officers to despatch men everywhere within their charges for preaching the Dharma. The two series of Rock and Pillar Edicts that followed comprised an elaboration and steady execution of the programme thus briefly sketched at the outset, and Aśoka states expressly more than once in these Edicts that this was a new departure introduced by him to make up for the apathy of centuries in which the moral well-being and progress of the people, though vaguely recognised by monarchs as desirable, had seldom been actively promoted by them².
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¹ *ib.* p. 168 n 3.
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² RE. IV A : PE. VII B-E.
Linked texts (1)
- Dhammapada — Pāli