King Asoka and Buddhism - Urban Dharma

There is in this a kind of Sinhalese one-upsmanship that isnot at all uncommon in the Mahāvaṃsa and that is quite willingto exalt the glories of Sri Lankan Buddhism even at theexpense of Buddhism in India, its place of origin.The two traditions thus use the same tale for two very differentpurposes. In the Aśokāvadāna, Tiṣyarakṣitā is not successfulin destroying the Bodhi Tree, but what saves it is notso much the failure of her magic as the devoted care andconcern — the Bodhipūjā — of Aśoka himself. The text thusserves to emphasize and glorify Aśoka’s own faith and devotion.In the Mahāvaṃsa, however, this feature is totally passedover, and instead what is stressed is the glory of Sri Lanka asthe new and chief preserve of the Buddhist religion.3. The Gathering of the RelicsMuch the same contrast may be found in the two texts’ versionsof another tale: Aśoka’s gathering of the Buddha’s relicsfor distribution into the 84,000 stūpas he plans to build. Boththe Sanskrit and the Pali traditions start the story in more orless the same way:After the parinirvāṇa and cremation of the Buddha, his relicswere divided into eight shares, one for each of the eight kingsof that time. Each of these monarchs then built a stūpa overhis portion of the relics; these were called the “droṇa stūpas”because the division of the relics had been made by a brahminnamed Droṇa and because each one of these enshrinedone droṇa (bucketful) of relics. One of these droṇa stūpas waslocated at the town of Rāmagrāma; not long thereafter it wasflooded by the waters of the Ganges and the relics there wereswept away and sank down to the underwater palace of thenāga king. Years later, when Aśoka set out to collect all the154