Ashoka Maurya
Ashoka Maurya (304–232 BCE), commonly known as
Ashoka and also as
Ashoka the Great, was an
Indian emperor of the
Maurya Dynasty who ruled almost all of the
Indian subcontinent from ca. 269 BCE to 232 BCE.
[1]
One of India's greatest emperors, Ashoka reigned over most of
present-day India after a number of military conquests. His empire
stretched from the parts of the ancient territories of Khorasan, Sistan
and Balochistan (unpartitioned) in what is now Afghanistan and possibly
eastern Iran, through the
Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan, to present-day Bangladesh and the Indian state of
Assam in the east, and as far south as northern
Kerala and
Andhra Pradesh. The empire had
Taxila,
Ujjain and
Pataliputra as its capital.
In about 260 BCE Ashoka waged a bitterly destructive war against the state of
Kalinga (modern
Odisha).
[2] He conquered Kalinga, which none of his ancestors (starting from
Chandragupta Maurya) had done. His reign was headquartered in
Magadha (present-day
Bihar). He embraced
Buddhism after witnessing the mass deaths of the
Kalinga War,
which he himself had waged out of a desire for conquest. "Ashoka
reflected on the war in Kalinga, which reportedly had resulted in more
than 100,000 deaths and 150,000 deportations."
[3] Ashoka converted gradually to Buddhism beginning about 263 BCE at the latest.
[2]
He was later dedicated to the propagation of Buddhism across Asia, and
established monuments marking several significant sites in the life of
Gautama Buddha. "Ashoka regarded Buddhism as a doctrine that could serve as a cultural foundation for political unity."
[4]
Ashoka is now remembered as a philanthropic administrator. In the
Kalinga edicts, he addresses his people as his "children", and mentions
that as a father he desires their good.
Denzil Ibbetson, an administrator of the British Raj, classified the Chauhans as a tribe rather than as a caste. He believed, like Nesfield, that the society of the Northwest Frontier Provinces and Punjab in British India did not permit the rigid imposition of an administratively-defined caste construct as his colleague, H. H. Risley preferred. According to Ibbetson, society in Punjab was less governed by Brahmanical ideas of caste, based on varna,
and instead was more open and fluid. Tribes, which he considered to be
kin-based groups that dominated small areas, were the dominant feature
of rural life. Caste designators, such as Jat and Rajput,
were status-based titles to which any tribe that rose to social
prominence could lay a claim, and which could be dismissed by their
peers if they declined. Susan Bayly, a modern anthropologist,
considers him to have had "a high degree of accuracy in his
observations of Punjab society ... [I]n his writings we really do see
the beginnings of modern, regionally based Indian anthroplogy."[4]