The Mauryan Polity c11.t4.1

c11.t4.1

This means that the Vedic doctrines and ethics formed the convenient model for the Jainas and the Buddhists to copy. As a matter of fact, in the period of which we are now speaking, there were no religious systems, such as Jainism and Buddhism, though one cannot deny that there were monastic sects embracing the ideas and ideals inculcated by the founders, Mahāvīra and Gautama. These monastic sects had not yet spread to the extent so as to assume the dimensions of what one may ordinarily understand by the term religion. Elsewhere this point has been examined¹ in extenso, and suffice it to say here that the history of Buddhism in the Mauryan epoch was still the story of the monastic sect looking for royal patronage and affording no locus standi to a lay man. If at this time Buddhism did not attain the status of a religion in the technical sense of the term,² it then naturally follows that Aśoka’s conversion to that faith becomes a fiction. For, the examination of Aśoka’s religion much depends on the evidential conclusion of the larger question whether there is justification for the assumption that Buddhism had been recognised as a religion, different from the established religion of the land. And yet we have strange, but as we shall soon point out, incredible stories about Candragupta becoming a Jaina, and Aśoka turning now to Jainism, and now to Buddhism.