King Asoka and Buddhism - Urban Dharma

the Fierce — an appellation that emphasizes the power-madside of his nature.Scholars, noting these stories, have generally argued thatthey are intended to emphasize the fierce and impetuous temperamentof Aśoka before his conversion to Buddhism, andso to magnify the greatness of his change of heart. In fact,however, even after he converts and comes to be known as“Dharmāśoka” — Aśoka the Righteous — we find that this sideof his nature persists. Thus, immediately after his conversionexperience, when one would expect him to be highly motivatedby his newfound faith and its doctrine of non-violence,Aśoka shows no mercy towards Caṇḍagirika, the man he hademployed as executioner-in-chief, and has him slowly torturedto death in his own prison. Still later, he flies into a rage andorders the massacre of 18,000 heretics for the misdeed of one ofthem; and then again he launches a veritable pogrom againstthe Jains, setting a bounty on the head of any heretic, a proclamationthat results in the decapitation of his own brother, thearhat prince Vītāśoka. 21All of this is summed up, perhaps, in the fact that in theAśokāvadāna Aśoka is said to be physically ugly, to have roughskin, and to be disliked by his father and the women of hisharem. 22 Significantly, the text attributes this ugliness andharshness specifically to the dubious nature of Aśoka’s act ofmerit in a past life — to his gift of dirt. Thus later, when Aśokameets the Elder Upagupta and notices that the Elder’s skin issoft and smooth while his own is coarse, rough, and unpleasantto the touch, Upagupta does not mince words in explainingthe karmic reasons for this: “That is because the gift I gaveto that peerless person (the Buddha) was very pure and pleasing;I did not offer the Tathagata a gift of dirt like you!” 23149