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Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c5.s2.t6: Asoka's Part in the Propagation of Buddhism

Aspects of Mahāyāna Buddhism and its Relation to Hīnayāna c5.s2.t6

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Asoka's Part in the Propagation of Buddhism

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We are yet in the dark about the part played by Asoka in the propagation of Buddhism. If he helped in the propagation of Buddhism at all, we are not aware whether he supported any particular school of Buddhism, or Buddhism in general. Throughout his exhortations, so far as they have been found in the Edicts, there is not the slightest hint of his actively helping the propagation of Buddhism. His edicts refer to the *dhammavijaya* as opposed to conquest by arms, but by *dhamma* he does not mean Buddhism. His *dhamma* consisted of maxims for leading an ideal life and performing meritorious acts which make a person happy in this world as well as the next. The edicts do not contain a single reference to Nirvāṇa or Śūnyatā, Anātma or Duḥkha, while on the other hand, they speak of heaven, and happiness in a heavenly life,² which was never an ideal of early Buddhism, for it considered existence in any one of the three dhātus, Kāma, Rūpa and Arūpa to be misery (*duḥkha*). But it must be admitted that when an emperor like Asoka shows a bias for a particular religion and even proclaims himself to be a Buddhist upāsaka and pays visits to the monasteries or sacred places of the Buddhists, the religion automatically receives an impulse, and its propagation by the Buddhist monks then becomes easy. So we may regard Asoka as a passive propagator of Buddhism, and, during his rule, the religion probably made its way throughout his kingdom, also reaching places beyond his dominion, viz., the kingdoms of the Yavanas, Kambojas, Gāndhāras, Pitinikas on the west, and Codas, Pāṇḍyas as far as the Tāmraparṇi on the south.¹ As Asoka was an adherent of Buddhism only as a supporter, or as an upāsaka,² we cannot expect him to be interfering in the sectarial disputes that were going on in his time. Hence it is difficult to attach importance to the tradition of the Mahāvaṃsa that he supported the Vibhajjavādins (=Theravādins),³ or to that of the Avadānas that he was an ardent devotee of Upagupta. It is also remarkable that he does not refer to the Bodhisattva conception, nor to the pāramitās, which could suitably have been incorporated into his code of moral maxims. His admonition to his subjects to choose the middle path, avoiding the two extremes, viz., of retirement from the world on the one hand and of indulgence in envy, anger, laziness and so forth on the other,⁴ shows that he was not so much in favour of retirement from household life, upon which the early Hīnayāna Buddhists always laid emphasis. Asoka's preference for the life of an ideal upāsaka as against that of a monk may have stimulated the Buddhist monks to devise ways and means to popularise their religion, and as the result of the efforts of the monks in this direction, we have the large number of the Jātakas and Avadānas.

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² Hultzsch, *Corpus*, p. liii. The remark of Dr. Hultzsch that Asoka's *dhamma*, preaching for heavenly life, represents an earlier stage of Nirvāṇa is without any foundation.

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¹ For details, see Hultzsch, *Corpus* (1925), pp. xxxviii, xxxix.

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² *Ibid.*, pp. xliv-xlv.

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³ *Mahāvaṃsa*, p. 54.

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⁴ Hultzsch, op. cit., p. 114. The rendering of Prinsep, Bhandarkar and Smith is adopted here in preference to that of Hultzsch whose rendering does not appear to be in consonance with the general tenor of the inscription. See M. N. Basu's remarks in this connection in the *I.H.Q.*, III, p. 349.

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The tradition of the Mahāvaṃsa about the part played by Asoka in the Third Council with Moggaliputta Tissa as its head, and about the despatch of missionaries to the various parts of India still awaits verification. It is not improbable that a sectarian council of the Theravādins was held under the leadership of Moggaliputta Tissa during Asoka’s rule, and that an active propaganda was set on foot to spread Buddhism in the various territories in and outside India,¹ which the *Mahāvaṃsa* recorded with a colouring of its own. In the same way, we can account for the two religious advisers of Asoka, namely Upagupta and Moggaliputta Tissa. Asoka as an impartial ruler offered equal treatment to the Buddhists and non-Buddhists. In the circumstances, it may be inferred that he would not support one school of Buddhism against another. The Theravādins as well as the Sarvāstivādins associated his name with the contemporaneous leading figures of their respective sects in order to add importance to themselves. So it would be fruitless to attempt an identification of Moggaliputta Tissa with Upagupta—as is done by Smith and other scholars.² We may with some amount of confidence accept the tradition of the *Mahāvaṃsa* that about the time of Asoka, Buddhism made its way to the countries of Kasmīra-Gandhāra, Mahisamandala, Vanavāsī, Yona, Mahāraṭṭha, Himavantapadesa, Suvaṇṇabhūmi and Laṅkādipa.³

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¹ The coincidence of the tradition of the Sarvāstivādins that Madhyāntika was the propagator of Buddhism in the north with that of the *Mahāvaṃsa* that Majjhantika was despatched to convert Kasmīra-Gandhāra, and the corroboration of the tradition by the caskets containing the relics with the inscriptions (on the top of the lid) ‘sapurisasa Kasapagotasa savahemavatācariyasa,’ and (inside the lid) ‘sapurisa(sa) Majhimasa’ deserve consideration. See Cunningham, *Bhilsa Topes*, p. 287.

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² Waddell in *J.A.S.B.*, 1897, pt. i, p. 76; *Proc. A.S.B.*, 1899, p. 70; Smith, *Early History of India*, 4th ed., p. 199 fn.

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³ *Mahāvaṃsa*, p. 94; *Sāsanavamsa*, p. 10. For detailed treatment see Smith, *Asoka* (3rd ed.), p. 44; Bhandarkar, *Asoka*, pp. 159ff.

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