Aśoka
A figure from the books
#Ashoka
Aśoka · c. 304–232 BCE · r. c. 268–232 BCE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Emperor — third of the Mauryan dynasty — and moral reformer; author of the earliest readable public writing in India.
“He wrote to the future in a script the future forgot how to read: for close to two thousand years India remembered him, if at all, as a name in king-lists, until a mint official in Calcutta cracked the script in 1837 — and in 1947 the new Republic put his wheel on its flag and his lions on its seal, choosing as its face the one king in history who apologized.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“After slaughtering his way to the conquest of Kalinga, he announced his remorse in stone, renounced further war, and spent three decades publishing — on rocks, in four scripts and three languages — the proposition that a king's job is his subjects' welfare, human and animal, and that everyone's religion deserves respect.”
From the book
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