Asoka, the Philosopher Emperor

Extracts from an article by Phiroz Mehta taken from volume 86 of Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 1944

Continued from part 1 and part 2

Self-knowledge, self-discipline and self-control were the keynotes for attaining freedom from all those desires emanating from the ego-centred man. Such freedom meant intellectual and spiritual maturity, the liberation of true individuality. The true individual was fully aware of his interdependence with his environment — he was “in tune with the Infinite”. He alone was wholly human, he alone capable of real love, of pure action, of true practicality. His was wisdom, the pure distillate of experience and knowledge, as contrasted with the burden of mere learning. And the sole dynamic of his whole life was the will as well as the ability to co-operate with “the power that moves all things to good”, to use the Buddha’s own words.

The true individual could enjoy the bliss of Nirvana as his normal state of consciousness. Only the ignorant or the deluded identify Nirvana with annihilation or with nothingness; or again with happiness or rapture as we ordinarily know it or “heaven “as we understand it. We must never forget that the term Nirvana applies to a state of consciousness only. We never “go to Nirvana”. We attain that consciousness here and now — in the eternal now — a state of consciousness wherein the mind maintains absolute serenity while the individual is fully sensitive and fully responsive to the whole of his experience in the immediate present. Here only can man know what pure action, implying his freedom from mere reaction to any stimulus, means. And pure action, in wholeness, maintaining that mental serenity which spells the individual’s sovereignty over self and not-self, over “I” and “my environment”, spells Nirvana. He who has freed himself from ego-centredness can understand this, for he can experience Nirvana for himself.

The Buddha’s doctrine of moral and mental development, and of the liberation of true individuality, is one of constant and strenuous endeavour in the here and the now. It is in truth an action philosophy to the profoundest degree, the very anti-thesis to an escapist philosophy. To look within and face the self is a far more difficult task, and needs far greater courage, patience, steadfastness, endurance and wisdom than facing external life. For the oceans of the everyday world are well charted, whereas the realm of the self is an unknown land which can be explored only in utter loneliness. But it is there that the pearl of wisdom may be found, and the finder wins the prize of Nirvana, man’s eternal quest.

In his all-embracing wisdom the Buddha saw the need of adapting his teaching to suit the capacity for understanding of his people. So he discoursed on the cause of sorrow and on the extinction of sorrow. And he taught the Noble Eightfold Path and how to tread the Middle Way. And he taught something else besides. He proclaimed the universal brotherhood of man, and to fulfil this in practice, he enunciated the principles and taught the methods of democracy. In his Samgha, the meeting was controlled by a specially appointed officer; where necessary a quorum was secured by another appointed officer; the business of the day was introduced in the form of a motion by the proposer, discussed, and the majority vote taken by ballot decided the discussion. Every member was free to speak and entitled to vote. The Buddha was the first great democrat of our race. He exhorted all the peoples to rise to this level. And for more than a thousand years the benign influence of the Buddha’s deep wisdom creatively stimulated Hindustan and gave birth to her two most glorious epochs.

But the Buddha knew that no true democracy could be brought into being and be maintained except by true democrats. And only true individuals could be democrats, for only true individuals could be truly self-controlled, truly self-responsible, and wisely co-operative, essentials of democracy in action. Hence the moral and religious doctrine of the Buddha for individual salvation is inextricably interwoven into the fabric of a stable, harmonious and creatively active social and political order. Siddhartha Gautama, who climbed the peaks of Buddhahood and was at home in the transcendental consciousness of Nirvana, was also a human son wholly worthy of his royal father.

Some centuries before the Buddha, the sages who left us the legacy of the Upanishads had shown their discontent with the ritualism of the old Indo-Aryans and their predecessors in India as embodied in the Brahmanas and Aranyakas, great explanatory commentaries of the older Vedas. The ancient magico-religious fertility rituals were failing to satisfy thinkers who rose partly out of an aristocratic leisured class, one of the products of the gradual settling down of warrior tribes who had established dominion over vast kingdoms. The teaching of Gautama Buddha was the culmination of the growing concepts of universality and brotherhood; of the necessity of moral discipline and of the paramountcy of Reason, of the unique nature and value of individuality, and of toleration as a guiding principle of human conduct. The age in which this greatest of Hindu reformers flourished was one of rare philosophic splendour — the age of Xenophanes and Parmenides in Elea, of Lao-tze and Confucius in China, of Mahavira in India, of Isaiah in Judah.

During the lifetime of the Buddha, his friend Bimbisara, fifth king of the Sisunaga dynasty, ascended the throne of Magadha in 543 B.C. The last of the Sisunagas married a Sudra woman and founded a Sudra dynasty of the Nandas. Dhanananda was on the throne of Magadha in 326 B.C. when the Macedonian phalanx refused to cross the Beas and Alexander turned back towards the Indus. The commander-in-chief of the Magadha army was a young man, one Chandragupta, who possibly had previous experience of war against the invincible Alexander.

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The Greek records of Alexander’s time show India to be a land of several warring kingdoms. But after 325 B.C. Chandragupta, commander-in-chief in Magadha, conceived of the idea of an Indian Empire, of a political unity to be forged by conquest of arms. Assisted by his able statesman-financier, Kautalya, he stamped out all opposition ruthlessly, ascended the throne at the capital, Patliputra (modern Patna), and established the Maurya dynasty. State after state fell before his military prowess and the cunning diplomacy of Kautalya. By 305 B.C. he was master of the highlands above Herat and up to the Hindu Kush. Sind, Kathiawar, Gujrat and Malwa, the provinces of the west also fell under his sway, and Chandragupta Maurya was suzerain over the first empire of India. In the brief space of hardly a score of years, he realised imperial sovereignty over all India from Afghanistan to Assam, from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas. A few years later the Emperor relinquished his throne and retired to the hermitage of a Jain Saint called Bhadrabahu, dying there in 297 B.C. Little did he know that the child Asoka, the grandson whom he is likely to have fondled on his knees when relaxing from the burdens of state, was destined to write the most wonderful page of Indian history.

Bindusara, who succeeded his father, ruled for nearly a quarter of a century. Of him we know little except that he expanded the empire, consolidated it, and fixed its administration on a firm footing. About 286 B.C. he sent Asoka, then eighteen years of age, as Viceroy to Ujjain, and later on, it is reported, to Taxila to quell a rebellion against the maladministration of his elder brother Prince Susima, the Crown Prince. On Bindusara’s death, Asoka seized the throne of Patliputra, the Crown Prince being killed (Divyavadana, Chapter 26); and four years after his accession he was crowned, in 270 B.C.

Asoka, fortunately for himself, inherited a well-organised empire. In extent, it was larger than all modern India, for, though it did not include a small region, about the size of England, in the extreme south, it included all Afghanistan and Baluchistan, and the easternmost strip of modern Iran. It was nearly two million square miles in area, yet so well organised that the royal commands issued from Patliputra were readily obeyed on the shores of the Arabian Sea and of the Bay of Bengal. Asoka’s Inner Cabinet of Four consisted of the Diwan or prime minister, the Purohita or religious adviser, the Senapati or commander-in-chief, and the Yuvraja or heir-apparent. Under these, the Principal Ministers of State included the Treasurer; the Minister of Works (whose responsibilities ranged from the maintenance of public buildings to the rain gauge); the head of the judiciary; the Minister of Correspondence, who issued the royal decrees; the Court Chamberlain; and the Commander of the Body-Guard. (B. Prasad, Theory of Government in Ancient India, p. 124.)

Agriculture was the outstanding industry of the land. The practical unit of administration was the village, under its headman (gramani) an official nominee, who dealt with the revenue and supervised farming, advised by the village council of elders (panchayat). The government’s policy was to provide for the even distribution of the agrarian population by systematic plantation of villages in thinly-occupied tracts. For the general improvement of agriculture officials were employed by the government ‘to superintend the rivers, measure the land as is done in Egypt, and inspect the sluices by which water is let out from the main canals into their branches so that everyone may have an equal supply of it’ (Strabo, quoting Megasthenes). But the government water rate, varying from one-third to one-fifth of the produce of the land, was a heavy burden. (Kautilya’s Arthashastra, Book 2, Chapter 24.)

A Gopa was the head of a dozen villages. Over several Gopas came higher officials; and Asoka appointed Rajukas who were responsible for hundreds of thousands of people.

The district officials, who formed the first of three categories of government servants mentioned by Megasthenes, were responsible for irrigation and land measurements, hunting, agriculture, woods and forests, metal-foundries and mines, roads and the distance stones maintained on them.

Chandragupta had organised the management of his capital in six boards of five persons each, and these town officials. formed the second category of government servants. The respective functions of the boards were:

1. Supervision of factories.
2. Care of foreigners (control of the inns, charge of the sick and the burial of the dead).
3. Births and deaths, for purposes of taxation and record.
4. Trade and commerce, supervising weights and measures and generally controlling the markets.
5. Inspection of manufactured articles and provision of distinction between new and second-hand goods.
6. Collection of the 10% tax on sales.

The six municipal boards formed a general council to superintend temples, public works, harbours and prices, and in both town and country there were officials who kept complete registers both of property and the population. (Kautilya, Book 2, Chapter 36.) The superintendent of passports issued these on payment for the use of all persons entering or leaving the country. (Kautilya, Book 2, Chapter 34.)

Continued in part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7

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