Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 T H E L AW 06accept any fare at all when Nick would pay for only three. The duel wassettled by Nick shoving the money into the conductor’s shirt pocket.After an appropriate time in this mass of flesh, we were delivered toLauriya Nandangarh. The scene was of a huge fair—about ten acres ofcanvas-covered stalls and pavilions around the great Ashokan pillar.Even with my weak eyesight, I could see the Ashokan lion on top of thesmooth column, looking like he was trying to escape the mayhemaround him. The dusty road at our feet was lined with the usual melangeof stalls and vendors, men on bikes or squatting by the road, and womenalways in that characteristic pose—one arm raised to support the pitcheror bundle on the head, the sari falling in drapes to the ankles with theiranklets. Out of this timeless Indian cameo stepped our latest friend, ateenager wearing Western clothing. He invited us for a meal and led usthrough the fair...although I was feeling too sick and dizzy to want tofocus on what was being sold. Nick kept up the conversation as we hoveredby the Ashokan column.The emperor Ashoka, having converted to Buddhism, had erectedstupas, stone tablets, and pillars all around his vast empire. The tabletsand the ten pillars remaining today have inscriptions on them that generallyoutline some aspect of the emperor’s policy of righteous rule.Sometimes these edicts are quite specific—prohibiting the slaughter ofanimals, or proclaiming the establishment of imperial officers to ensurefor the well-being of the populace—but more consistently they expressAshoka’s sincere wish for Dhamma, religiously based law, to prevail.Although his own inclination was toward the Buddha’s Dhamma,Ashoka—referred to in the edicts as “Beloved of the Gods”—displaystherein a paternal benevolence toward the other religions of his empire.It was a short-lived episode in Indian history, remarkable in that,despite the size of the empire and its high degree of order and integrity,Ashoka’s reign was subsequently forgotten. The mainstream of Indianculture swung against a religion that had no place reserved for Brahmins;in the historical records that the Brahmins preserved, there is only1 2 3