King Asoka and Buddhism - Urban Dharma

frontier areas as a reaction against them. All these theories callfor careful re-examination, weighing and sifting all evidencegleanable from Buddhist sources, because the lithic records ofAśoka, as are hitherto available, are silent on his last decadeas emperor.8. ConclusionThis review of a number of prevalent opinions on the placeof Aśoka in history has enabled us to answer the three mainquestions to which we focused attention. These answers inbrief would be as follows:(1) On the criterion of being corroborated by independent literary,archaeological or epigraphical evidence, the Sri LankanPali records and the Theravāda tradition founded on them canbe relied upon as providing a credible account of the role andachievements of Aśoka as far as his services to the Buddhistcause are concerned.The Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan sources of the NorthernBuddhist tradition do reflect the memory of Aśoka’s munificence,pilgrimages and religious buildings. But their historicalreliability has been considerably reduced, firstly, because Aśokafigured in Avadānas where his spiritual adviser Upaguptawas more prominent, and, secondly, because the chronologyhad been confused due to Upagupta’s contemporaneity withKāḷāśoka. Compared to these, the least helpful are the Purāṇas,while Kalhaṇa’s Rājatarangiṇī can hardly be a historical sourcefor Aśoka the Mauryan Emperor.221