King Asoka and Buddhism - Urban Dharma

edicts addressed to the Saṅgha; and (ii) no mention is made anywhereof the teachings of the Buddha. As shown earlier, Aśokadid express his affiliation to Buddhism in several lithic recordsand not all of them are addressed to the Saṅgha. Certainly,MRE I which is found in thirteen locations is not an edictaddressed only to the Saṅgha. So is RE VII, which refers to hispilgrimage to the sacred Bodhi Tree. If there is an impressioncreated in some minds as a result of statements like Thapar’sthat Aśoka did not broadcast his Buddhist affiliations far andwide, his lithic records would not permit such an impressionto be sustained.The other statement that the teachings of the Buddha arenot mentioned anywhere stands refuted by MRE III at Bairat(Bhābru) where seven identifiable discourses of the Buddhahave been presented by Aśoka to his co-religionists — the religiousand the lay — as his recommended anthology of readingsfrom the Buddhist Canon. Equally significant are wordperfectdirect quotations from the Tripiṭaka which are found inthe edicts. Barua has marshalled together enough evidence inthe form of no less than 270 parallels which supports his conclusionthat “none was, perhaps, more steeped in the knowledgeof the Buddhavacana than Aśoka, that none drank deeperat that fountain of inspiration.” 35 What Thapar had in mind,quite probably, was that Aśoka makes no reference to the fundamentalBuddhist doctrines such as the Four Noble Truths, thethree signata (anicca-dukkha-anattā), the twelve-point dependentcausation (paṭicca samuppāda), or even Nirvāna.The anthology of Buddhist texts which Aśoka identifiedserves as an index to what aspect of Buddhism had attractedhis attention. What we see in the edicts is nothing more than aparaphrased and condensed version of the ethical teachings of65