Ashoka (Ashoka Maurya)

person · earth · South Asia

Mauryan emperor, conventionally dated r. c. 268-232 BCE, known from some thirty-three inscriptions on rocks, pillars and cave walls in Prakrit dialects and, at Kandahar, in Greek and Aramaic. The inscriptions promote dhamma — a public ethic of restraint, non-injury and religious tolerance — and record the despatch of envoys. Buddhist textual tradition additionally credits him with convening a council at Pataliputra and sending missions, including his son Mahinda to Sri Lanka; those claims come from later Pali chronicles, not from the inscriptions, and historians treat the two bodies of evidence separately. Ashoka is the Journey's earliest well-attested case of state sponsorship changing a religion's reach.