Pillars of Ashoka
Ashoka the Great, 304-232 BCE, renounced violence, converted to Buddhism, and started a number of projects to improve the lot of the poor, the aged and the widowed. In addition he put up pillars all over his empire, often in city-squares or along major thoroughfares, on which he explained his policies and his aspirations. Today there are still 33 of these pillars left. Darius, the king of Persia, had put up similar monuments where he had boasted about the battles he had won and the number of enemies he had killed. But Ashoka invert this message. His pillars express his promise to rule his people with compassion and benevolence, to renounce violence and make sure that everyone of his subjects was happy and well fed. The text is written in a colloquial style, using local languages instead of the Sanskrit employed at court. The pillars were also a way of spreading his presence throughout the empire, uniting it, and making every subject aware of who their ruler was.
This way of communicating with his subjects was quite ambitious not least since Ashoka also is credited with being the first Indian ruler to make use of a written script. People in general were not able to read. To make them understand what the pillars said, a public official was posted at each one of them. The officials explained the message which the pillar conveyed but they also gathered information about the state of the country and the grievances of the population. Along the borders of empire there were pillars written in foreign languages such as Aramaic and Greek. They announced that who ever was traveling this way now had entered the lands governed by the benevolent king Ashoka.
External links:
- Archaeological Museum of Sarnath, “Capital of Ashokan pillar “
- Archaeological Survey of India, “Ashoka”
- British Museum, “Pillar fragment”
- Columbia University, “The Ashokan lion capital”
- Edicts of Ashoka, 1950
- IMBD, “Chakravartin Ashoka Samrat”
- Sumpa Khan-po Yeçe Pal Jor, History of the rise, progress and downfall of Buddhism in India
- Times of India, “Imagine TV’s serial Chandragupta Maurya will be revived by Sony Entertainment”
- Upinder Singh, “Governing the state and the self: political philosophy and practice in the edicts of Ashoka”
History of Philosophy without Any Gaps: “Kautilya and Ashoka”
BBC Radio 4, Excess Baggage: “Ashoka’s India”
In Our Time: “Ashoka the Great”
History of the World in a Hundred Objects: “The Pillar of Ashoka”
Incarnations, “Ashoka: Power and Persuasion”
We celebrate #MayTheFourth early with our tribute to #Starwars #CloneWars and #Ashoka with special guest @squirestweets of @GrowingUpSkywa https://anchor.fm/thegeekydadpodcast/episodes/S-2-E--14--The-Big-Clone-Wars-Show-with-Anna-Squires-e1gprhq
The 2022 Prudential Emerging Visionaries Summit is in full swing! #PruEmergingVisionaries #Ashoka
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Hands up, how many of you are also in the middle of a Clone Wars rewatch??
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#Kenobi
#TheCloneWars
#Ashoka
#AnakinSkywalker
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