The Mauryan Polity c11.s3.t3.5

c11.s3.t3.5

To crown all this comes Aśoka’s important public statement: “Thus do I attend to all classes. All sects are also honoured by me with various offerings. But which is one's own approach (or choice) is considered by me as the most essential."' His policy was clear. It was non-interference as regards choice of religious belief, but intervention to see that everything was properly accomplished. If the theory that Aśoka fostered the orthodox Buddhist *sangha* can be accepted, it is equally acceptable that he showed no less zeal in fostering the rival sect founded by Devadatta, a cousin of the Buddha. The founder of this sect was a mythological saint Konākamana, one of the previous Buddhas, according to the Pāli version of the tradition. He enlarged the *stūpa* dedicated to Konākamana and paid a state visit to it when he had been anointed twenty years.²