The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c11.14

c11.14

If the king follows these prescriptions as a rule of conduct, this necessarily takes much from his character as an absolute despot. As a matter of fact, with the gradual spread of Buddhism, the teachings of Buddha came to be not without influence upon the conduct of kings : Candragupta’s grandson Asoka who ruled in the third century B. C., “the god-beloved king Piyadasi,” as he calls himself in his stone edicts, shows himself here as a ruler who in several respects comes close to the ideal picture given in the Jâtakas.