Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s36.1

c11.s36.1

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.