King Asoka and Buddhism - Urban Dharma

e Aśoka, a layman, who tests monks on their doctrine. Yetthis is hardly out of character for a king whom we know putup an inscription telling the Saṅgha which texts to study. It isthe occupational hazard of rulers to think they know best.Whether the story is essentially accurate or inflates a minorincident in which Aśoka did not personally participate, it servesin the Theravādin literature to complement the Vinaya, supplyingthe missing piece to the puzzle of the Saṅgha’s regulation.Buddhist kings ever after Aśoka saw it as their duty toact as Defender of the Faith — to use the Christian phrase — byexpelling malefactors to purify the Saṅgha. For a Buddhist, todefend the faith is to defend the Saṅgha.Aśoka has been the model for rulers all over the Buddhistworld. Within the next thousand years at least five kings of SriLanka prohibited the killing of animals. 29 In Burma, Aśoka’sexample has constantly been invoked by kings, 30 and PrimeMinister U Nu, modelling himself on Aśoka, had innumerablesmall stūpas put up. 31 The great Khmer ruler Jayavarman VII(1181 –after 1215) saw himself as a “living Buddha” and inhis inscriptions expressed Aśokan sentiments on the materialand spiritual welfare of his subjects and announced that hehad had hospitals built. 32 In eleventh-century Thailand, KingRāma Khamhaeng ordered that for urgent business he shouldbe disturbed even on the toilet. 33 In fifth-century China, theBuddhist emperor Lian-u-thi went and lived in a monasterywith monks. 34 Of course no one before the nineteenth centuryhad access to the inscriptions, or even knew they existed; theybased themselves on Buddhist literary sources. In moderntimes, Aśoka’s precedent has been no less invoked but moredistorted. The great Sinhalese Buddhist reformer AnagārikaDharmapāla, whose assumed name Dharmapāla means9