King Asoka and Buddhism - Urban Dharma

ConclusionWith this Lokapaññatti legend, we come to a logical endpoint inour study of the development of Aśoka’s image. It is a developmentthat has taken us from the time of Aśoka himself throughto the relatively late layers of the tradition. In the course of it,we have been able to trace what might be called the generalidealization of Aśoka from a Buddhist point of view.In the edicts, Aśoka’s relation to Buddhism is, as we haveseen, ambiguous; at best he is a sympathetic semi-patronwhose concern for Buddhism is but part of a larger interest inthe spiritual state of his empire. In the Aśokāvadāna and theMahāvaṃsa, however, we found the image of a fully BuddhistAśoka, but one which was skewed by its context and presenteddifferently depending on the different outlooks of its presenters.Finally, in later sources, in South, Southeast and East Asia,we saw some of those special concerns drop and give way to afull magnification of the person of Aśoka as the great and idealBuddhist king, the model of devotion and bhakti.There is one final image of Aśoka that we have not touchedon here but which might, in fact, concern us more than any other.That is the image of Aśoka that has developed among modernscholars and among present-day followers of Buddhism. Inour own time, I have heard Aśoka heralded as a champion ofBuddhist socialism, as a founder of Indian nationalism, as anadvocate of animal rights, as the prophet of pacifism. Likewisehe has been lambasted as a hypocrite, a totalitarian Big Brother,a maker of monastic landlordism. To some extent, all of theseviews may be rooted in the sources we have considered, andit is likely that there is some truth in each of them. But takentogether they testify once again to the ongoing developmentand the ever-changing nature of the image of Aśoka.173