King Asoka and Buddhism - Urban Dharma

such a way that no heretical monks could enter and causedisunity in the community. It is perfectly understandablefor an Anglo-Indian Civil Servant to conclude quite erroneously,of course, that the Emperor who issued such ordersshould have had some kind of authority over the Sangha asits head. The Pali sources of Sri Lanka explain in some detailthe relationship between Aśoka and the Sangha far moreclearly. They would have shown him that the Sangha admittedno head even among the monks and to recognize a laymanin such a capacity was unthinkable. But these explanationswere disregarded as all the evidence from these sourceswas indiscriminately rejected. In any case, Sukumar Dutt in1955 was flogging a dead horse as this theory of Smith hadbeen long rejected by all serious students of Indian or Buddhisthistory.As regards the other two statements on Aśoka’s role in thepropagation of Buddhism, Sukumar Dutt again had to ignorethe evidence of the Buddhist sources and resort to such argumentsas the following:(1) “The illusory idea that the Emperor was an enthusiast andpropagandist of Buddhism arises from undiscerning identificationof ‘Dhamma,’ wherever it occurs in the edicts, with the Buddhistreligion.” 72(2) “But the Dhamma, for which the Emperor was an enthusiast,was not Dhamma in any formal, cultish or clerical sense.” 73(3) “With this popular, non-scholastic, non-doctrinal conceptionof the Dhamma, Aśoka’s concern about the purgation ofheresies from the Sangha, described in the legends, does notseem to fit well.” 74 (Here, of course, he suppresses the fact thatAśoka’s concern over heresies in the Sangha is expressed withadequate clarity in the three Schism Edicts.)211