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Ashoka
But Charles Allen has primarily recreated the life and times of Ashoka. In doing so he tries to understand how he ‘survived the vicissitudes of some 2270 years and yet remain “intangible, more myth than real personage, little known and little valued, a subject seemingly fit only for academics and not the wider world”. His lament is understandable for a country that remains under the spell of a mythical Bharatvarsha has little time for the ruler who first forged India into a nation state. Even more importantly he gave India a distinctive voice and perhaps became the first proponent of conquest by moral force and whose statements of governing principles shaped the cultures of the farthest corners of Asia. The history of Ashoka, apart from his transformation from being the angry and cruel king to the peace-loving benign ruler, is also the history of a strong ruler exercising central authority to encourage the development of a script that could adequately represent the sounds of the spoken language of the times. Ever since the burning of the library of Nalanda (it took months) by Qutub-ud-din Aibak’s General Muhammad Bakhtiyar in 1193-94 CE the monuments of India have been the victims of the competitive spirit among the Muslim invaders to establish themselves as the true
soldiers of Islam. So much so that Babur describes in his Baburnama how he destroyed a structure at Shahbazgarhi, now in Pakistan’s northern provinces in the mistaken belief that a tomb of an unbeliever should not be existing in “so charming and delightful spot”. The narration of this incident is
also illustrative of the painstaking effort of picking pieces to fit the jigsaw for Shahbazgarhi, Girnar and Dhauli rock edicts of Ashoka form a triangle covering a distance of
three thousand miles. Add to it the southern region of Karnataka and one has a surer picture of the length and breadth of the kingdom ruled by him. Fortunately, Ashoka was so committed to exercising his moral authority over his subjects that he was determined to spread his word and make it lasting. Hence the spread of the Pillar and the Rock Edicts though one can be sure many more have been destroyed and lost and not all to the earthquakes and elements. India today has to be eternally grateful to the Hastings and the Cunninghams for being obsessive in learning and understanding India and in process digging, literally and figuratively, the past for posterity. The work of many more is neither quoted nor seen today for that has gone into the foundation of the history created by the Allens of the later years. But their contribution is no less valuable as the author has so meticulously pointed out. For years, the Kalinga conquest, its horror and transformation of Ashoka has fascinated creative people as has been the heroic role of his grandfather Chandragupta and tragic story of the blinding of his son Kunal. There is little doubt that someday even the old age and helplessness in his last days too might attract creative writers but the importance of Ashoka is not in just the kind of a person he was but in the moral percepts that became central to his statecraft and which, the failings of mankind notwithstanding, remain goals that nations strive to achieve in order to establish peace and harmony. A very readable book and
can occupy a pride of a place in any collection.
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Charles Allen’s
Ashoka is not just the story of a monarch but that of the long lost ancient India. The book is, in no small measure, a tribute to those archaeologists who despite often being plagued by petty jealousies, competition and ego clashes have thwarted the combined efforts of bigots, iconoclasts and the elements to excise ancient India from human memory. Often it happened due to the omission of the Brahmins who would not yield any space to Buddhist India but more often because of the wanton vandalism of the Muslim invaders. 