Essay on the Status of Mauryans During the Ruling of Ashoka

This then was the empire which Asoka inherited in area a subcontinent, inhabited by peoples of many cultures and at many levels of development; a society with a wide range of customs, beliefs, affinities, antagonisms, tensions, and harmonies. Magadha and the western Ganga valley were culturally aryanized but the fringes of this area were less so.

The north was in close con­tact with the Hellenized culture of Afghanistan and Iran; the far south was on the threshold of the creative efflorescence of Tamil culture. To rule such an empire successfully would have required the perception and the imagination of an exceptionally gifted man. This was the challenge which Asoka attempted to meet.

For many centuries Asoka remained almost unknown to the Indian histori­cal tradition. He was mentioned in the genealogies of the Mauryan kings but nothing more than the length of his reign was stated about him.

A vast amount of semi-historical, largely legendary, material on his life had been collected in Buddhist sources but this material practically disappeared from the Indian tradition with the decline of Buddhism in India by the end of the thirteenth century. It was preserved in Buddhist centres outside India-in Ceylon, Central Asia, and China.

The proclamations issued by Asoka were engraved on rocks and pillars throughout the subcontinent and these re­mained visible, but unfortunately the Brahml script in which they had been engraved had become archaic and the inscriptions could not be read. How­ever, in 1837 the Orientals James Prinsep deciphered the script.

Although the text was now known, the author of the inscriptions could not be identified, since he was generally referred to only by his titles-Devanampiya Piyadassi- The Beloved of the Gods, of Gracious Mien-and these were unknown to the Indian king-lists.

A tentative identification with Asoka was made in the late nineteenth century on the evidence from the Buddhist chronicles of Ceylon. It was not until 1915 that this identification was confirmed, however, with the discovery of an inscription which referred to the author as Devanampiya Asoka.

The association of this name with Buddhist sources led to his edicts being interpreted almost as Buddhist documents. Undoubtedly Asoka was a Buddhist and much of the ideology of Dhamma which he enunciated was in­spired by Buddhism. But to equate it totally with Buddhism and to suggest that Asoka was propagating Buddhism as the state religion is to read more into the edicts than was intended by the monarch.

A careful analysis of the in­scriptions reveals that they were of two categories. Some were addressed specifically to the Buddhist Church or Sangha and were concerned entirely with matters relating to the Sangha.

The majority of the inscriptions are, how­ever, addressed to the public at large and deal with questions of wider interest. It is significant that it is in this second category of inscriptions that the king expounds his ideas on Dhamma.

It would appear that Asoka aimed at creating an attitude of mind among his subjects in which social behaviour had the highest relevance. In the context of conditions during the Mauryan period, this ideology of Dhamma may have been viewed as a focus of loyalty and as a point of convergence for the existing diversities of people and activities. Dhamma stressed toleration, non-violence (where the emperor himself forswore violence and force as means to an end), respect for those in positions of authority, including both the brahmans and the Buddhist monks, consideration and kindness towards inferiors, and the general acceptance of ideals conducive to human dignity.

The king instituted a special class of officers-the officers of Dhamma-who were responsible for the propagation of this ideology and who worked for the general welfare of the people.

Yet the ideology of Dhamma died with the death of the emperor. As an attempt to solve the problems of the time it was perhaps too idealistic. At the same time it can hardly be described as a revolutionary doctrine, since it was largely an emphatic reiteration of certain existing principles of ethics. But credit must be given to the man who had the vision to seek such a solution and the courage to attempt it. Fifty years after the death of Asoka the Mauryan Empire had declined.

Some historians have traced this decline to the policies of Asoka, claiming that his pro-Buddhist sympathies led to a brahmanical revolt against the Mauryan rulers; others have suggested that his adherence to non-violence led to a weakening of the military strength of the empire and laid it open to attacks, particularly from the north-west. But evidence in support of these theories is far too slight.

Other possibilities must also be considered, not least among them being that the later Mauryan kings may well have been weak and ineffectual rulers, unable to hold together such a vast empire. Furthermore the pressure of a highly paid bureaucracy and a large army could not have been sustained over a period of almost 150 years without a strain on an agri­cultural economy.

Either these two money-consuming items would have had to be whittled down and readjusted or in periods of depression fresh sources of income would have had to be found.

Finally, the strongest bond in uniting people into a political entity-the desire on the part of the people to become a nation-was lacking. The divergences in the various parts of the subcon­tinent were too great to allow the formation of a national unit. The doctrine of Dhamma, which might have created a common factor of loyalty, failed to do so.

The subsequent fragmentation of the subcontinent was not entirely arbi­trary, for it led to the identification of geographical areas as political entities. These (with some modification) were to remain the nuclei of political units in the Indian subcontinent for many centuries.

In 185 B.C. the Mauryan Empire ceased to exist. The immediate inheritors of the Mauryas in the Ganga heart-land, Magadha, were the Sungas, a Brahman family which had usurped the throne at Pataliputra.

The Sungas were to give way to the Kanvas, to be followed by a series of minor dynasties until the rise of the Guptas in the fourth century A.D. During these centuries Magadha tended to remain somewhat isolated, and few attempts were made by its rulers to participate in events elsewhere.