ASOKA, a famous Buddhist emperor of India who reigned from 264 to 228 or 227 B.C. Thirty-five of his inscriptions on rocks or pillars or in caves still exist (see INSCRIPTIONS: Indian), and they are among the most remarkable and interesting of Bud dhist monuments (see BUDDHISM). Asoka was the grandson of Chandragupta, the founder of the Maurya (Peacock) dynasty, who had wrested the Indian provinces of Alexander the Great from the hands of Seleucus, and he was the son of Bindusara, who suoceeded his father Chandragupta, by a lady from Champs. The Greeks do not mention him and the Brahman books ignore him, but the Buddhist chronicles and legends tell us much about Asoka.
The inscriptions, which contain altogether about 5,000 words, are entirely of religious import, and their references to worldly affairs are incidental. They begin in the 13th year of his reign, and tell us that in the 9th year he had invaded Kalinga, and had been so deeply impressed by the horrors involved in warfare that he had then given up the desire for conquest, and devoted him self to conquest by "religion." What the religion was is explained in the edicts. It is purely ethical, independent alike of theology and ritual, and is the code of morals as laid down in the Buddhist sacred books for laymen. He further tells us that in the 9th year of his reign he formally joined the Buddhist community as a layman, in the i I th year he became a member of the order, and in the 13th he "set out for the Great Wisdom" (the Sambodlii), which is the Buddhist technical term for entering upon the well known, eightfold path to Nirvana.
The extent of Asoka's dominion included all India from the 13th degree of latitude up to the Himalayas, Nepal, Kashmir, the Swat valley, Afghanistan as far as the Hindu Kush, Sind and Baluchistan. It was thus as large as, or perhaps somewhat larger than, British India before the conquest of Burma. He was undoubtedly the most powerful sovereign of his time and the most remarkable and imposing of the native rulers of India.
"If a man's fame," says Koppen, "can be measured by the number of hearts who revere his memory, by the number of lips who have mentioned, and still mention him with honour, Asoka is more famous than Charlemagne or Caesar." At the same time it is probable that, like Constantine's patronage of Christianity, his patronage of Buddhism, then the most rising and influential faith in India, was not unalloyed with political motives, and it is certain that his vast benefactions to the Buddhist cause were at least one of the factors that led to its decline.