King Asoka and Buddhism - Urban Dharma

Upagupta commanded immense veneration and Chineseworks like Fo-tsu-t’ung-ki and San-kiau-yi-su elaborated wondrousaccounts of his conversion and conversions, bringingAśoka into them as Upagupta was reputed to be his spiritualadviser.With Aśoka thus occupying a secondary position to thisspiritual adviser in the Avadāna literature, the information onthe monarch is minimal and, as far as they can be verified,unreliable. This statement may be supported by analysing thedata in the Divyāvadāna:(1) Aśoka is placed exactly a century from the death of theBuddha. This discrepancy with other sources (specially theGreek sources which fix the date of the Mauryan accessionwithout a modicum of doubt) has been explained as caused byconfusing the Mauryan Aśoka with Kāḷāśoka of the Śiśunāgadynasty (the patron of the Second Council according to theTheravāda tradition). What is equally if not more probableis that Aśoka’s date had been advanced by over a century tocoincide with Upagupta. According to the Theravāda traditionas recorded in the Cullavagga of the Vinaya Piṭaka, aswell as the Sri Lankan chronicles, 21 Saṇakavāsi, the discipleof Ānanda and the Third Patriarch of the Northern Buddhists,was not only a contemporary of Kāḷāśoka but also was a primemover in finding Sabbakāmi to preside over the Second Council.Pali records know him and call him Sambhūta Sānavāsi, 22Upagupta, who was his disciple, could thus have been a contemporaryof Kāḷāśoka, rather than of Aśoka, the MauryanEmperor. A further reason for the confusion between Kāḷāśokaand Aśoka is that they both ruled from Pāṭaliputra, the formerhaving shifted his capital from Rājagaha to this city.191