The remorse of Emperor Ashoka

[Ajay0]

Ashoka was the third Mauryan Emperor ( 304 – 232 BCE) in the Indian subcontinent, who is considered a major patron of Buddhism responsible for spreading it across Asia and the known world then. 

He started his imperial career as an aggressive young conqueror seeking to expand his empire and invaded the state of  Kalinga , an independent feudal kingdom.  While Ashoka emerged victorious in the hard fought war, the heavy casualties he witnessed depressed him and he experienced a bout of unhappiness and mental anguish instead. This was instrumental in his conversion to Buddhism and pacifism later on.

Aśokāvadāna is a book that is about Ashoka and is part of the Divyavadana which are some of the oldest Buddhist writings. His remorse after the bloodshed of the Kalinga war is poignantly expressed thus :

                 "What have I done?
                  If this is a victory,
                what's a defeat then?

            Is this a victory or a defeat?

             Is this justice or injustice?

               Is it gallantry or a rout?

  Is it valor to kill innocent children and women?

Did I do it to widen the empire and for prosperity
or to destroy the other's kingdom and splendor?

               One has lost her husband,
                      someone a child,
              someone an unborn infant....

           What's this debris of the corpses?
         Are these marks of victory or defeat?

                      Are these vultures,
                               crows,
        eagles the messengers of death or evil?"

[How to be wise]

A Buddhist Emperor, a bit of an oxymoron isn’t it, kind of like an enlightened killer. 

[Ajay0]

2 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

A Buddhist Emperor, a bit of an oxymoron isn’t it, kind of like an enlightened killer. 

Attention deficit, I suppose. 

I had mentioned in the op that Ashoka embraced Buddhism and pacifism later on after the brutal Kalinga war.

[LSD-Rumi]

37 minutes ago, Ajay0 said:

"What have I done?
                  If this is a victory,
                what's a defeat then?

            Is this a victory or a defeat?

             Is this justice or injustice?

               Is it gallantry or a rout?

  Is it valor to kill innocent children and women?

Did I do it to widen the empire and for prosperity
or to destroy the other's kingdom and splendor?

               One has lost her husband,
                      someone a child,
              someone an unborn infant....

           What's this debris of the corpses?
         Are these marks of victory or defeat?

                      Are these vultures,
                               crows,
        eagles the messengers of death or evil?"

Those are beautiful, thanks for sharing.

[How to be wise]

4 hours ago, Ajay0 said:

Attention deficit, I suppose. 

I had mentioned in the op that Ashoka embraced Buddhism and pacifism later on after the brutal Kalinga war.

No, I just didn’t bother reading your whole post.

[Breakingthewall]

interesting. In the West that guy would never have been a paradigm, Julius Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon were. Psychopaths.

[caspex]

As a kid learning about him in school I just thought he was really dumb to realise something like that only after so much killing.

After growing up, now I appreciate this as one of the hardest shifts from Red to Green in history

[LSD-Rumi]

4 minutes ago, caspex said:

As a kid learning about him in school I just thought he was really dumb to realise something like that only after so much killing.

After growing up, now I appreciate this as one of the hardest shifts from Red to Green in history

I think it is rather a shift from red to blue. But yeah, one would think peace is the virtual thing until you grow up and learn that all of life is based on violence one way or the other.

[Harikrishnan]

Everything was cool until some ajivika drew a budha postrating on some ajivika guru and a sect was cleansed from history.