Thoughts on Asoka the Great

[Bast]

There's a lot of talk on western leaders throughout history so I thought we could talk about Asoka. What do you think? Achievements, legacy, greatness etc...

This is what H.G. Wells had to say about Asoka:

In the history of the world there have been thousands of kings and emperors who called themselves 'their highnesses,' 'their majesties,' and 'their exalted majesties' and so on. They shone for a brief moment, and as quickly disappeared. But Ashoka shines and shines brightly like a bright star, even unto this day.

 

[North King]

It's really rather hard to figure out how much of his good side is actually true and how much of it is me projecting the image of a perfect ruler onto him because we don't really know all that much. However, he certainly was a remarkable ruler by any measure. A skilled warrior, great administrator, and beloved by his people...

Probably the main negative he has is that he apparently utterly failed in leaving much of a legacy, given how rapidly the Mauryans fell from prominence after his reign. They had a couple of good rulers, yes, but the infrastructure of the Empire was too underdeveloped to withstand the periods of bad emperors and barbarian invaders.

 

[Tee Kay]

The Fall of the Mauryans is often interpreted as a Brahmin (traditional ruling class) reaction to the Buddhism of Asoka.

http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch13.htm

In the final years of his reign, Ashoka withdrew from public life, and in 232 BCE - after thirty-seven years of rule - he died. During the reign of his heirs the empire begin to split apart, including the breaking away of Kalinga. Why this happened is unknown. Buddhist writings suggest that decay had come before Ashoka's death. Some scholars attribute the decline to economic pressures: revenues from taxing agriculture and trade that were inadequate in maintaining the large military and army of bureaucrats. Perhaps palace politics reduced the ability of Ashoka
's heirs to govern. Perhaps Ashoka's heirs inherited from Ashoka
a pacifism that discouraged their using force in keeping the empire together. Whatever the cause or causes, regions within the empire asserted their independence, and the empire disintegrated while the Maurya family, in Pataliputra, continued to rule.

In 185 BCE, the rule of the Maurya family ended when an army commander-in-chief, Pusyamitra Sunga, murdered the last Maurya king during a parade of his troops. Pusyamitra's rise to power has been described, perhaps inaccurately, as a reaction by Brahmins to the Buddhism of the Maurya family. Nevertheless, the influence of state power on religion continued, with Pusyamitra supporting orthodox Brahminism and appointing Brahmins to state offices. And, with Pusyamitra's rule, animal sacrifices returned that had been prohibited under Ashoka and his heirs. Other matters outlawed by the Mauryas also returned, including musical festivals and dances.

The most important factor though I think was weak leaders. The Empire has grown so large (covering most of what is now India and Pakistan) and so diverse, Asoka's successors simply could not hold it together.

 

[Agent327]

Like the First Emperor of China Asoka set an example that was hard to follow: before Asoka India had no tradition of unification, but unlike Alexander he himself had examples in his own predecessors.

(From various Wikipedia entries: )

The reign of Ashoka Maurya could easily have disappeared into history as the ages passed by, and would have, had he not left behind a record of his trials. The testimony of this wise king was discovered in the form of magnificently sculpted pillars and boulders with a variety of actions and teachings he wished to be published etched into the stone. What Ashoka left behind was the first written language in India since the ancient city of Harappa. Rather than Sanskrit, the language used for inscription was the current spoken form called Prakrit.

In the year 185 BC, about fifty years after Ashoka's death, the last Maurya ruler, Brhadrata, was brutally murdered by the commander-in-chief of the Mauryan armed forces, Pusyamitra Sunga, while he was taking the Guard of Honor of his forces. Pusyamitra Sunga founded the Sunga dynasty (185 BC-78 BC) and ruled just a fragmented part of the Mauryan Empire. Much of the northwestern territories of the Mauryan Empire (modern-day Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan) became the Indo-Greek Kingdom.

When India gained independence from the British Empire it adopted Ashoka's emblem for its own, placing the Dharmachakra (The Wheel of Righteous Duty) that crowned his many columns on the flag of the newly independent state.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nanda_Empire.gif

Nanda Dynasty

According to Plutarch, at the time of Alexander's Battle of the Hydaspes River, the size of the Nanda Empire's army further east numbered 200,000 infantry, 80,000 cavalry, 8,000 chariots, and 6,000 war elephants, which was discouraging for Alexander's men and stayed their further progress into India:
“ But this last combat with Porus took off the edge of the Macedonians' courage, and stayed their further progress into India. For having found it hard enough to defeat an enemy who brought but twenty thousand foot and two thousand horse into the field, they thought they had reason to oppose Alexander's design of leading them on to pass the Ganges, too, which they were told was thirty-two furlongs broad and a fathom deep, and the banks on the further side covered with multitudes of enemies. For they were told the kings of the Gandaritans and Praesians expected them there with eighty thousand horse, two hundred thousand foot, eight thousand armed chariots, and six thousand fighting elephants. Nor was this a mere vain report, spread to discourage them." ”

—Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Alexander 62.1-4

In order to defeat the powerful Nanda army, Chandragupta needed to raise a formidable army of his own.[28]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chandragupta_Maurya_Empire.gif

Chandragupta Maurya renounced his throne to his son, Bindusara, who became the new Mauryan Emperor. Bindusara would later become the father of Ashoka the Great, who was one of the most influential kings in history due to his important role in the history of Buddhism.

Popular culture

Chandragupta Maurya was included as a Great General in the Warlords expansion to the Civilization IV video game, which often includes real historical people in its gameplay. He is mentioned by the Guru, the leader of the Thuggee, as an inspirational figure in the 1939 film Gunga Din in his effort to drive the English from India.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IndiaGuptaEmpire.jpg

The Gupta Empire (Hindi: गुप्त राजवं&#2358 was ruled by members of the Gupta dynasty from around 320 to 550 C.E and covered most of Northern India, parts of eastern Pakistan and what is now western India and Bangladesh. The time of the Gupta Empire is referred to as the Golden Age of India in science, mathematics, astronomy, religion and Indian philosophy. Scholars of this period include Aryabhatta, who was the first to come up with the concept of zero, postulated the theory that the Earth moves round the Sun, and studied solar and lunar eclipses, and Kalidasa, who was a great playwright, who wrote plays such as Shakuntala, which is said to have inspired Goethe, and marked the highest point of Sanskrit literature. The peace and prosperity created under leadership of Guptas enabled the pursuit of scientific and artistic endeavors. Historians place the Gupta dynasty alongside with the Han Dynasty, Tang Dynasty and Roman Empire as a model of a classical civilization. The capital, of the Guptas, was Pataliputra, present day Patna, in the Indian state of Bihar.

The origins of the Guptas are shrouded in obscurity. The Chinese traveler I-tsing(Hieun-Tsang) provides the first evidence of the Gupta kingdom in Magadha. He came to India in 672 AD and heard of 'Maharaja Sri-Gupta' who built a temple for Chinese pilgrims near Mrigasikhavana.


Not until the Sultanate of Delhi was there evidence at any further attempts of unification.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Delhi_History_Map.png

The Delhi Sultanate (Urdu:دلی سلطنت, Hindi: दिल्ली सलतन&#2340, or Sultanat e Hind (Urdu: سلطنتِ هند; Hindi: सलतनत ए हिन्&#2342 / Sultanat e delhi (Urdu: سلطنتِ دلی, Hindi: सलतनत ए दिल्ल&#2368 refers to the many Muslim dynasties that ruled in India from 1206 to 1526. Several Turkic and Pashtun ("Afghan") dynasties ruled from Delhi: the Mamluk dynasty (1206-90), the Khilji dynasty (1290-1320), the Tughlaq dynasty (1320-1413), the Sayyid dynasty (1414-51), and the Lodhi dynasty (1451-1526). In 1526 the Delhi Sultanate was absorbed by the emerging Mughal Empire.

During the last quarter of the twelfth century, Muhammad Ghori invaded the Indo-Gangetic plain, conquering in succession Ghazni, Multan, Sindh, Lahore, and Delhi. Qutb-ud-din Aibak, one of his generals, proclaimed himself Sultan of Delhi and established the first dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mamluk dynasty (mamluk means "owned" in Arabic) after Muhammad Ghori's death in 1206. By the early 13th century, northern India from the Khyber Pass to Bengal was under control of the Sultanate, although the northwest was contested with the Mongols. Iltutmish (1210-35), and Balban (1266-87) were among the dynasty's most well-known rulers. Faced with revolts by conquered territories and rival families, the Mamluk dynasty came to an end in 1290.

The Khilji or Khalji dynasty, who had established themselves as rulers of Bengal in the time of Muhammad Ghori, took control of the empire in a coup which eliminated the last of the Mamluks. The Khiljis conquered Gujarat and Malwa, and sent the first expeditions south of the Narmada River, as far south as Tamil Nadu. The Delhi Sultanate rule continued to extend into southern India, first by the Delhi Sultans, then by the breakaway Bahmani Sultanate of Gulbarga, and, after the breakup of the Bahmani state in 1518, by the five independent Deccan Sultanates. The kingdom of Vijayanagar united southern India and arrested the Delhi Sultanate's expansion for a time, until its eventual fall to the Deccan Sultanates in 1565.

In the first half of the 14th century, the Sultanate introduced a monetary economy in the provinces (sarkars) and districts (parganas) that had been established and founded a network of market centers through which the traditional village economies were both exploited and stimulated and drawn into the wider culture. State revenues remained based on successful agriculture, which induced Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq (1325-51) to have village wells dug, offer seed to the peasants and to encourage cash crops like sugarcane (Braudel 1984, pp 96f, 512ff).

The Delhi Sultanate is the only Sultanate to stake a claim to possessing one of the few female rulers in India, Princess Razia Sultana (1236-1240). While her reign was unfortunately short she is regarded well in the eyes of historians. Princess Razia Sultana was very popular and more intelligent than her brothers. She was the very first queen of the Muslim world in the early Muslim history of sub-continent. She ruled from the east Delhi to the west Peshawar and from the North Kashmir to the South Multan.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mughals.JPG

The Mughal Empire (Persian and self-designation: گورکانیGurakâni ; Urdu: مغلیہ سلطنت, Hindi: मुग़ल सलतनत Muġalīah Sulṭanat), was an Islamic imperial power which ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from the early 16th to the mid-19th centuries.[1] The Mughal Emperors were of Turko-Mongol descent, but developed a highly sophisticated mixed Persian culture. At the height of its power, around 1700, it controlled most of the Subcontinent - extending from present-day Bangladesh to Kashmir and part of what is now Afghanistan. Its population at that time has been estimated as between 110 and 130 million, over a territory of over 4 million km² (1.5 million mi²).[2] Following 1725 it declined rapidly. Its decline has been variously explained as caused by wars of succession, agrarian crises fueling local revolts, the growth of religious intolerance, and British colonialism. The last Emperor, Bahadur Shah II, whose rule was restricted to the city of Delhi, was imprisoned and exiled by the British after the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

The classic period of the Empire starts with the accession of Jalaluddin Mohammad, better known as Akbar the Great, in 1556, and ends with the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, although the Empire continued for another 150 years. During this period, the Empire was marked by a highly centralized administration connecting the different regions. All the significant monuments of the Mughals, their most visible legacy, date to this period.