THE LAW’S GREATS

Law without Sorrow: Aśoka the Great

( ca. 304-232 B.C.)

''Law is good. But does Law consist of? It consists of few sins and many good deeds, of kindness, liberality, truthfulness, and purity.''

—AŚOKA, PILLAR EDICT VII¹

Aśoka, The Emperor Without Sorrow

The third Emperor of the Mauryan Empire, Aśoka (ca. 304-232 B.C.) is largely unknown in the West, and certainly not immediately recognizable as one of Law’s Greats. But that is a result of our own parochial historical and legal education, and not as a result of Aśoka’s lack of greatness.

Aśoka—the name means “without sorrow” in Sanskrit—was grandson of Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Mauryan dynasty that governed the larger part of the Indian peninsula from around 321 through 185 B.C. Aśoka—who has earned the moniker “the Great” from historians in the know—was a warrior, and upon accession to the Mauryan throne a brutal military conqueror. When he first acceded to the throne his contemporaries named him Chandaśoka, the “heartless” or “murderous” Aśoka. Building on the conquests of his predecessors, the sanguinary warrior-king ruled over most of modern-day India and parts of Nepal and Afghanistan. But he is not regarded as one of Law’s Greats because of his brutal and bloody conquests. After all, as Cicero said long ago, law is silent during the times of war, and generals are not ordinarily considered rich in the virtue of jurisprudence. Aśoka is known as one of Law’s Greats because of his courtship with the Law. In one of the most remarkable volte-faces in history by any ruler, Aśoka repented of the evil of war, and fell in love with the Law, specifically that rich, expansive vision of Law advanced by Buddha—Dhamma or Dharma.² Once he shunned war as an instrument of policy and aggrandizement of his state, Aśoka devoted his life to the happiness of his people through the promotion of Dharma. The lasting instruments of that policy were edicts of Dharma carved on rock, pillars, and caves which survive to this day. These remain capable of inspiring the rightful exercise of power, and challenging its misfeasance.

Chandaśoka

Twenty-three years after the death of Alexander the Great, while his successor Seleucus Nikator ruled part of the great Alexander’s former empire, Aśoka was born to Bindusura.³ Bindusura was reigning emperor of the Mauryan kingdom, and his queen was appropriately (as we shall see) called Dharma. Bindusura had multiple wives, and so Aśoka had numerous brothers or half-brothers, perhaps as many as one hundred. Early in life, Aśoka showed a genius and disposition to the arts of war; consequently, he spent his early life in the Mauryan armies, eventually rising to the rank of general. His successes on the battlefield disquieted his siblings, especially the eldest and first in line for the throne, Susīma, who viewed Aśoka as a threat to his expectancy of power.

During one of his many battles, Aśoka was injured and taken to a Buddhist Monastery in Ujjain to recover. There he was exposed to the teachings of the Buddha. Though said to have embraced those teachings, it appears he was more concerned with embracing his Buddhist nurse, a woman named Devī, who was daughter of a merchant from the town of Vidiśā and whom he later married. But whatever his exposure to Buddhism, it appeared superficial, as it had not yet turned his mind, much less his heart, from the glories of the battlefield.

Devoted to the Ājīvika sect and showing a spirit of intolerance, Aśoka’s father frowned on his son’s union to a Buddhist woman, and exiled Aśoka from Pataliputra, the empire’s capital.⁴ So he sent the useful Aśoka back to Ujjain as governor—effectively a banishment of sorts. Shortly thereafter, his father died, and the various brothers battled over a four-year period for the glory of the Mauryan imperium.⁵ Ultimately, Aśoka attacked the capital, Pataliputra (modernly, Patna), captured and decapitated his many half-brothers—there were allegedly ninety-nine of them spawned by his father from his many wives—including the eldest, Susīma, and threw their bodies down a well. Aśoka’s wrath spared only one brother, his phrater adelphos, Vitāśoka or Tissa. That sanguinary deed earned him the title Chandaśoka, which means the “murdering” or “heartless” Aśoka.

Once he secured the Mauryan throne, Aśoka continued his bellicose, expansive policy. He used his energy to expand the Lebensraum of his people during eight years of constant warfare. Somewhere between 265-263 B.C., he turned his attention to the independent feudal republic of Kalinga, situated in the Southeastern part of the Indian peninsula and bordering the Bengali Sea. He intended to incorporate it forcibly into his empire. And he did so, but at a tremendous price to his enemies’ soldiery and to Kalinga’s population.

Conversion to Dharma

In an admixture of legend and history, the elements of which are probably forever impossible to sort out, it is related that after his victory over the independent and proud Kalingans at the battle by the town of Bhubaneswar by the River Daya, Aśoka surveyed the field of battle walking along that river’s banks. He walked past broken tambours, trumpets, spears, and swords—the detritus of war. The Daya’s waters by which the warrior walked ran red with the blood of the warriors, horses, and elephants—Mauryan and Kalingan—mixed, like all war and sometimes profusely, with the blood of the innocent. In what only can be called an act of sheer grace, Aśoka’s pride in his military prowess was pierced; the internal bulwark which blinded him from seeing the destruction of his bellicose ways was breached. Mixing the historical with the legendary, the Indian writer Gita Mehta gives a poignant rendition of Aśoka’s remarkable metanoia. It represents a moral turn in a man and a historical turn in a nation that is nothing short of beautiful.

Compassion is what filled Aśoka’s heart, compassion and compunction. It is exceedingly rare that one in power finds the humility to admit his public wrong, especially when externally unforced. The Emperor Theodosius repented for the massacre of Thessalonica he ordered, but only because St. Ambrose first chastised him. Henry IV repented on his knees at the snows of Canossa, and (disingenuously) begged Pope Gregory VII’s forgiveness for the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas á Becket, but only grudgingly because the Pope’s judgment of excommunication absolved the King’s subjects of their oaths of fealty. President Clinton apologized for his indiscretions and lies with respect to Monica Lewinsky, but not until his denial was belied by his semen on her dress and the scientific certainty of DNA analysis. Not so, Aśoka. Aśoka repented publicly because the silent, still voice of his conscience—which, in the final analysis, is the source of Law for every man—urged him. In one of his famous edicts, Aśoka himself inscribed on rock for posterity, the event that so transformed him, and was so to transform his method of governance:

But there is a more important reason for the King’s remorse. [The innocent and the good] all suffer from the injury, slaughter, and deportation inflicted on their loved ones. . . . Thus all men share in the misfortune, and this weighs on King Priyadrsi's mind.⁸

Dharmasoka

Aśoka's Laws

From that moment on the banks of the River Daya dyed red up to his dying breath, Aśoka spurned war, adopted the doctrine of non-violence (ahimsa), and fell in love with the Law—Dharma. As he put it in one of his edicts, “the sounds of war drums [had] become the call to Dharma.”⁹ From the point of his conversion, Aśoka considered moral conquest—that is, conquest by Dharma, (Dharma-vijaya)—the only legitimate conquest for the ruler.¹⁰ Rejecting war as an instrument of policy, Chandaśoka, the Aśoka of War, became Dharmaśoka, the Aśoka of Law.

In grasping Aśoka’s devotion to Dharma and its historical significance, we must understand the breadth of the Dharman concept. Dharma is a concept not adequately comprehended by our word “Law” as we use it modernly. Dharma is a Natural Moral Law; it includes notions of morality, fittingness, piety, religious duty, justice, equity, harmony with the cosmos, and the right and good.¹¹ It is less external than internal, yet—pace Austin, Bentham, Holmes and other positivists who have deeply influenced us not altogether for the good—and rather in the noble tradition of Cicero’s Republic, St. Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa, Locke’s Treatise of Government, and Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail—it is, and ever shall be, True Law. “Dharma provides a code of personal conduct, a bond of human relations and political justice, and a principle of international relations, and Dharma turns the lives of men away from evil deeds, mutual intolerance, and armed conflict.”¹² The Aśokan concept of Dharma shunned the superficial; it was deep calling on deep. Aśoka minimized the importance of external ceremony and rites and mechanical formality in worship, recognizing that virtue cannot be gained by trick or rubric. Like the Hebrew Psalmist, Aśoka promoted the “one ceremony which has great value . . . that of Dharma.”¹³ Dharma, like the wells dug and the banyan and mango trees planted along his empire’s roads, is water for the human spirit, and shade and fruit for the human soul.

Aśoka's Laws

Having this broad notion of Dharma in mind and guided by the teachings of the Buddha, Aśoka reformed the administration of his government so as to promote the rule of Dharma. With the money he saved from not wreaking war, he sponsored myriad social works—hospitals, schools, roads, veterinary hospitals, and more—because it conformed to Dharma. And to promote the rule of Dharma, Aśoka inscribed edicts throughout the Mauryan Empire, using pillars, rocks, and caves as the town criers of his policy. From the time of his conversion to Dharma at the banks of the River Daya, Aśoka’s entire dedication as a ruler was to the welfare—spiritual and material—of his people.

The Pillar, Rock, and Cave Edicts

In one of his most lasting monuments and tributes to Dharma, Aśoka had his edicts of Dharma placed throughout his lands on pillars, on rocks, and in caves on his frontiers, and in the frequented places of his far-flung empire. Generally, the rock edicts were placed at the empire’s borders. The pillar edicts were erected in cities with large populations or along important roads. The cave edicts—found only in the Barabar Hills in Bihar—appear to be directed toward Ājīvika monks, and not the general population.

With minor exceptions, the edicts are in the language of the common people—Prākrit,¹⁴ and not the literary language of Sanskrit. “[T]he choice of language is a sign of the universality of Asoka’s conception of morality,” Professors Nikam and McKeon tell us. “It was not a recondite ideal to be pursued by speculative philosopher, systematic theologians, or contemplative mystics; it was an attitude of mind and way of life for all men.”¹⁵ Indeed, the propagation of Dharma went far beyond the state. Families were urged to expand the reign of Dharma: “Relatives should propagate” the teaching of Dharma, wrote Aśoka in his Yerragudi edict, “to their own relatives.’”¹⁶ And the populace was instructed by Aśoka periodically to recite publicly his edicts, much like Roman children recited the Twelve Tables, or our children recite the Pledge of Allegiance under God (where not prevented by an activist court).¹⁷

Aśoka's Laws

Sadly, the Mauryan Empire fell apart fifty years after its great emperor’s death, and his edicts went more and more neglected as the centuries rolled by and Prākrit was forgotten. The pillar, rock, and cave inscriptions were first brought to the attention of Western scholars in the mid-18th century, although they were not deciphered until 1837 by English Asiatic scholar, James Prinsep.¹⁸ Sixteen rock edicts, three minor rock edicts, seven pillar edicts, three minor pillar edicts, and two pillar Inscriptions have been identified and translated.¹⁹

Professors Nikam and McKeon summarized the significant of the pillar, rock, and cave edicts:

It is in their universality that Aśoka’s pillar and rock edicts speak to modern Indians—nay, to all humanity—today.

Dharma and the Happiness of the People

“All men are my children,” said Aśoka. “Just as I seek the welfare and happiness of my own children in this world and the next, I seek the same things for all men.”²¹ In a manner redolent of our Founding Fathers, Aśoka believed that the end of government was “the happiness and welfare of the people,” and that this meant not the pursuit of pleasure, but the pursuit of an Aristotelian type of happiness, a eudaemonism which required the virtuous pursuit of the good, i.e., Dharma.

How was this well-being, this happiness to be attained? According to Aśoka’s view, happiness is difficult to achieve, and there is but one, universal way to attain it:

“Dharma is good,” states Aśoka in Pillar II. “But what does Dharma consist of? It consists of few sins and many good deeds, of kindness, liberality, truthfulness, and purity.”²⁴ “This is good, here and hereafter. Let [the people’s] pleasure be pleasure in morality [Dharma-rati]. For this alone is good, here and hereafter.”²⁵

The Administration of Dharma

Aśoka did not simply promulgate edicts and then enjoy the pleasures of his harem.²⁶ Instead:

The wheel of his power
Rolled through the great empire
Of Janpudrīpa.²⁷

He changed the entire tenor of his administration after he embraced Dharma. “The whole political organization,” including his private life and his method of rule, “was made subsidiary to moral law in a concrete translation of the law into specific forms of human and social relations.”²⁸ He instructed that he would no longer limit his public duties to certain hours, but that his officers (mahamatras) could interrupt him at any time and any place if duty required. He gave up the habit of traveling through his empire for entertainment or hunting game, as kings are wont to do. “In the past, kings used to go on pleasure tours (vihar-yatras). On these tours, they hunted and indulged in other past times,” Aśoka inscribed in one of his Rock Edicts, but since his conversion “tours have been moral-tours (Dharma-yatras). . . . King Priyadrsi takes great pleasure in these tours, far more than could result from other tours.”²⁹

“The foundation of law and the guidance of its administration,” Aśoka learned following his conversion, “must be found in morality, and therefore Aśoka transformed his system of administration by instituting a new category of high officials charged with the promulgation and supervision of morality (Dharma-mahamatras).”³⁰ These “officers of Dharma” were in charge of instruction, imposition of penalties, and the distribution of reward based upon moral virtue and not influence, power, shrewdness, or wealth.³¹ Today, our government does not send out “officers of Dharma” to our schools, but rather experts in sex education who promote and pass out condoms and artificial contraception (adharma) rather than insisting on the virtue of chastity (dharma). That many argue, and many accept, that reliance on birth control technology rather than reliance on virtue presents a progressive advance and not a lapse into barbarism, is further evidence of how much we need an American Aśoka.

Aśoka also established a government official whose charge it was to administer charity and social programs. Aśoka was solicitous to the elderly, the poor, and the sick, promoted the use of medicinal herbs, and founded poor houses, hospitals—perhaps more than a hundred throughout his kingdom.³² His benevolence did not end with humans, as he also founded veterinary hospitals, and passed edicts that prevented cruelty to animals and limited their killing. He built roads, and supplied them with frequent wells and rowed them with banyan and mango trees, offering the traveler both shade and snack.

Dharma and the Administration of Justice

Some of Aśoka’s edicts were specifically aimed at the reform of judicial administration. Dharma was also expected of judges: it was to guide their lives, the legal process, and their judgments. In Pillar Edict I, Aśoka commands: “[T]hese are my rules [to my officials]: to govern according to Dharma, to administer justice according to Dharma, to advance the people’s happiness according to Dharma, and to protect them according to Dharma.”³³

Judges and other officials in charge of the administration of justice were told, in the Kalinga Edict I, to “follow the middle path,” and avoid passion which in its extremes was harmful. “Envy, anger, cruelty, impatience, lack of application, laziness, and fatigue interfere with the attainment of this middle path.” Therefore, King Aśoka urged his judges “try to be sure that you are not possessed by these passions.”³⁴

Aśoka insisted that legal procedures used in the resolution of disputes be fair. “Impartiality is desirable in legal procedures,” Aśoka wrote in his Pillar Edict IV.³⁵

This impartiality in the administration of justice was important, for litigation was not to be seen as an adversarial conquest of one party over another. For Aśoka, such a vision of litigation was one of power and arbitrariness, and so engendered bitterness. Not so judgment consonant with Dharma.

Although Aśoka did not ban capital punishment,³⁸ he was solicitous to the rights of those charged with capital offenses. For example, Aśoka provided that those sentenced to death should have an automatic three-day reprieve, so that their relatives could appeal the conviction.³⁹ Aśoka also periodically released prisoners, either as a result of pardons, or as an early form of parole. He directed his officers of Dharma to promote the prisoners’ welfare, and make provisions for the early release of those who had repented of their wrong and turned to Dharma, had children, or were sick or aged.⁴⁰

Aśoka instituted additional substantive reforms, limiting the use of torture and encouraging liberality and a light hand in the meting out of punishment. He encouraged mercy and forgiveness. He “esteemed forbearance and lightness of punishment,”⁴¹ and surely expected his judges to esteem likewise. “King Priyadrsi now thinks that even a person who wrongs him must be forgiven for wrongs that can be forgiven.”⁴² Yet Aśoka was also firm when the common good or protection of the innocent required it, and in his Rock Edict XIII he urged the violent forest tribesmen “to repent” from their unsocial and criminal behavior, “lest they be killed.”⁴³

Dharma and the Promotion of Religion

As a lay disciple (upāsaka) of the Buddha or perhaps even a quasi-Buddhist monk (bhikkhugatika), Aśoka was dedicated to Buddhism, and was active in promoting it throughout his empire.⁴⁴ He built perhaps as many as 84,000 stūpas and numerous caityas throughout his empire.⁴⁵ He also promoted Buddhist monasticism by giving political and economical protection to Buddhist monks and nuns, by donating land for their monasteries, and by promoting the production of statutes and the copying of scriptures.⁴⁶ Aśoka additionally sent emissaries and envoys to surrounding lands, and sponsored Buddhist missionary efforts in Ceylon, Burma, and the mountain regions of the Himalaya.⁴⁷ Personally, he was committed to the “Three Jewels” of Buddhism: Buddha, Dharma, and Samgha (the Buddhist monastic order).

But Aśoka’s vision of Dharma was much broader than Buddhism. It was a concept that was consonant with the rites and beliefs of the other religions and multiple cultures throughout his empire. For Aśoka, Dharma transcended religious sectarianism and parochial culture; it was a value that could be “cultivated in all religions and sects . . . whatever their religious affiliations.”⁴⁸ This is the upshot of Rock Edict XII.

Aśoka thus understood the concept of Dharma as a natural law, a concept universal and sufficiently pluralistic not to clash with the many other religions in his regnum—such as Brahmanism, Jainism, and the Ājīvikas—which also enjoyed his support during his reign.⁴⁹ Professor Nakamura’s synopsis:

Aśoka and India

The Dharmachackra

Aśoka is regarded as a symbol of unified India.⁵¹ Indeed, one of the Pillars that bear his edicts of Dharma is the source of modern India’s national symbols. The Pillar at Sarnath erected by Aśoka was crowned with a capital of four lions sejant on an abacus decorated with the Dharmachakra or “Wheel of the Law.” After India’s independence from Great Britain in 1947, these Aśokan symbols were adopted by the Indian government as national symbols, and may be found on the Indian coinage and the Indian flag. Aśoka’s edicts—like unswerving stone Hebrew prophets, or better, like a petrified “lion’s roar” of Buddha—still stand. They stand perhaps to the discomfiture of current secular governments, in their quiet insistence that, to promote the happiness of its people, a good government should promote spiritual values without neglecting material ones. They argue for religious tolerance without, however, succumbing to the vice of relativism. They urge a love for God’s creation and commitment to environmentalism. They demand that we protect human life, from the moment of conception until natural death. They advocate a commitment to social justice and a rejection of institutional greed. They call for an educational and civil ethos (including our sources of entertainment) that promotes virtue and not license under the moniker of liberty. Finally, they summon us to advance a political ethic that frowns on expansionism, war, and the stockpiling of military fodder and nuclear arsenals.⁵² How well are we listening?

Pillar at Sarnath

With good reason, Aśoka has been described as an ancient Ghandi.⁵³ He was, if one may make such a comparison, a Buddhist analogue to Constantine or Charlemagne,⁵⁴ or perhaps St. Louis IX. In the words of the Buddhist, he is a Bodhisattva of good government,⁵⁵ a Chakravartin, a universal and just ruler who advances the happiness of his people.⁵⁶

Endnotes

¹ Pillar Edict VII, in N. A. Nikam and Richard McKeon, trans. and eds., The Edicts of Asoka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 40. ⇑

² Dharma is the Sanskrit word. The Prākrit form of the word is Dhamma ⇑

³ In Greek sources, Bindusura is referred to as Amitochates, probably a transliteration of the Sanskrit amitrakhāda (eater of foes) or amitraghāta (slayer of foes). Romila Thapar, Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 17-18. ⇑

⁴ Thapar, 4, 18. ⇑

⁵ Thapar, 19. ⇑

⁶ Mehta, Gita, “Ashoka, Beloved of the Gods,” Tricycle Vol. VIII, No. 2 (Winter 1998), 21–24 ⇑

⁷ Priyadrsi, Sanskrit for “one who sees to the good of others,” “one who looks with kindness,” or, less literally, “the benevolent one.” It was a title by which Aśoka referred to himself. Nikam and McKeon, n. 2, 25-26. ⇑

⁸ Rock Edict XIII in Nikam and McKeon, 27-28. ⇑

⁹ Rock Edict IV, Nikam & McKeon, 31. The word for drum (bheri) may be broader than a war drum, and may also include the drums that were associated with public festivals and public entertainment. Thapar, 152-53. ⇑

¹⁰ Cf. Rock Edict XIII, Nikam & McKeon, 29. ⇑

¹¹ Hajime Nakamura, Parallel Developments: A Comparative History of Ideas (Tokyo: Kondansha, Ltd., 1975), 325-26. For discussion of the concept of Dharma see generally Werner F. Menski, Hindu Law: Beyond Tradition and Modernity (New Dehli: Oxford University Press, 2005); Reinhard May, Law and Society East and West: Dharma, Li, and Nomos, Their Contribution to Thought and to Life (Hirschburg: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH, 1985); Ved P. Nanda and Surya Prakash Sinha, eds., Hindu Law and Legal Theory (New York: New York University Press, 1996). The Indo-European root of dharma, dher, means to hold firmly or support. Dher is also the root of the Latin firmus—firm, strong, stable—and the Greek thronos—seat, throne. ⇑

¹² Nikam & McKeon, 19. ⇑

¹³ Rock Edict IX, Thapar, 254. Cf. Ps.51:10, 16-17 (RSV). “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me . . . . For thou has no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” ⇑

¹⁴ Nikam and McKeon, 2, 15. While the inscriptions are in the common language, Prākrit, depending on the region, they are written in either the Kharosthi or the Brahmi alphabets. Id. at 16. Exceptionally, one of the inscriptions is in Greek and Aramaic. Id. at 20. But that was at Kandahar in modern-day Afghanistan in a region that had been ceded by the former general of Alexander the Great and Seleucid emperor, Seleucus Nikator, to Chandragupta, and so may have appealed to the language of the local populace or been intended to influence the adjoining Seleucid (Hellenistic) Kingdom. Id. 20-21; see also Thapar, 7. ⇑

¹⁵ Nikam and McKeon, 16. ⇑

¹⁶ Nakamura, 337. ⇑

¹⁷ Nakamura, 337-38 citing Bhandarkar, 329. ⇑

¹⁸ Nikam and McKeon, 2-3. ⇑

¹⁹ A readily available translation of the Pillar, Rock, and Cave Edicts by Ven. S. Dhammika can be found at http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html ⇑

²⁰ Nikam and McKeon, viii. ⇑

²¹ Kalinga Edict II, Nikam and McKeon, 53. ⇑

²² Rock Edict VI, Nikam & McKeon, 38. ⇑

²³ Pillar Edict I, Nikam and McKeon, 41. ⇑

²⁴ Pillar Edict II, Nikam & McKeon, 41. ⇑

²⁵ Rock Edict XIII, Nikam & McKeon, 30. ⇑

²⁶ He apparently never gave up the pleasures of the harem. Notably, none of Aśoka’s edicts address lust or monogamous chastity. Proof that “natural law . . . in a few cases . . . can fail . . . because the reasons of some are distorted by passion, evil habits, or evil natural disposition. Thus Julius Caesar remarks that the Germans once did not regard theft as evil.” S.T. I IIae q. 94, art. 4. ⇑

²⁷ Dīpavamsa, VI.2, quoted in Thapar, 146. ⇑

²⁸ Nikam and McKeon, 21. ⇑

²⁹ Rock Edict VIII, Nikam & McKeon, 37. ⇑

³⁰ Nikam and McKeon, xiii. ⇑

³¹ Nikam and McKeon, xv. ⇑

³² Nakamura, 342-43. ⇑

³³ Pillar Edict I, Nikam and McKeon, 42. ⇑

³⁴ Kalinga Edict I, Nikam & McKeon, 62. ⇑

³⁵ Pillar Edict IV, Nikam and McKeon, 60. ⇑

³⁶ Thapar, 176. ⇑

³⁷ Rock Edict XIII, Nikam & McKeon, 30. ⇑

³⁸ Thapar, 176-77. ⇑

³⁹ Pillar Edict IV, Nikam and McKeon, 61. ⇑

⁴⁰ Rock Edict V, Nikam and McKeon, 58-59. ⇑

⁴¹ Nakamura, 335 (referencing Rock Edict, XIII). ⇑

⁴² Rock Edict XIII, Nikam & McKeon, 28. ⇑

⁴³ Id. ⇑

⁴⁴ Maskī Rock Edict, Nikam & McKeon, 66. Scholars debate whether Aśoka was a layman (upāsala) or a bhikkhugatika, a sort of intermediate “third order” between a layman and a monk (bhikkhu). Nakamura, 340-41; Thapar, 29. ⇑

⁴⁵ A stūpa is a funeral tumulus or shrine, and a caitya is a larger, worship hall. ⇑

⁴⁶ Nakamura, 340. ⇑

⁴⁷ Nakamura, 339-40. ⇑

⁴⁸ Nikam & McKeon, 19; Cf. The Catholic Catechism § 1957 (“Application of the natural law varies greatly; it can demand reflection that takes account of various conditions of life according to places, times, and circumstances. Nevertheless, in the diversity of cultures, the natural law remains as a rule that binds men among themselves and imposes on them, beyond the inevitable differences, common principles.”) ⇑

⁴⁹ Nakamura, 330. ⇑

⁵⁰ Nakamura, 329-30. ⇑

⁵¹ Nakamura, 324. ⇑

⁵² Cf. Gita, 25. ⇑

⁵³ Nikam & McKeon, 6. ⇑

⁵⁴ Thapar, 145. ⇑

⁵⁵ Bodhisattva is Sanskrit for “enlightened being,” one who gives himself up for the benefit of others. Bodhisattvas “are resourceful, in all matters using conciliatory and agreeable methods, and in government they are adept in persuasive speech.” Mahāvastu, I, 133-34 in Clarence H. Hamilton, Selections from Buddhist Literature (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1952), 108. ⇑

⁵⁶ Chakravartin is a Sanskrit term derived from chakra (wheel) and vartin (“turning” or “one who governs”). In Buddhism it means a universal and just ruler. In India, it is frequently applied to Aśoka. ⇑