Do we think the Ashokan principal of dhamma can even inspire us today?
Answers
The young Ashoka had many options to choose from. In what might be the most dramatic fit of remorse in history, he adopted the Buddhist faith after a brutal attempt at expanding his territories east into Kalinga, present-day Odhisha. Ashoka speaks, in his most well-known thirteenth rock edict, of his grief and regret after the carnage at Kalinga, and of how after which he was “devoted to the pursuit of dhamma [the Buddhist/right path], the love of dhamma, and to instructing the people in dhamma”.
However, on this Republic Day, it is Ashoka the man of the world, rather than the man of his otherworldly spiritual quest, that is worth remembering. As his most recent biographer, archaeologist-historian, Nayanjot Lahiri shows in her deeply researched and imaginatively-written account, Ashoka evolved over life time as an innovative thinker and ruler who introduced entirely new ideas of kingship – clearly aiming to be a people’s emperor – that too in an empire of an unprecedented scale that would not be replicated for another millennium.