Asoka of India :: essays research papers

Asoka was one of the greatest feelrs of ancient India. He was the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya of Magadha who established the branch Indian empire. Chandragupta reigned for twenty-four years before relinquishing his throne in favor of his son, Bundusara (Asokas father), who left no noticeable mark upon the empire. Asoka was born(p) in 304 B.C. and was known in his youth as Canda Asoka (the fierce Asoka) because of his strugglering nature.     Asoka came to the throne in 270 B.C. after a power struggle that finish in the death of one of his brothers. He was at first wedded to follow the example of his father and grandfather and complete the conquest of the Indian peninsula. In about 256 B.C. Asoka attacked Kalinga, a country on the east slide of Madras, in order to expand his empire, which he ruled as a tyrant at the time. Asoka succeeded in conquering Kalinga in the bloody war in which 100,000 men were killed, 150,000 injured, and thousands were capture d and retained as slaves. The sight of the slaughter confused in his conquest deeply distressed Asoka and deeply affected his mind. Overwhelmed by the carnage, he changed his way of life.     Asoka, who practiced Brahmanism, renounced war forever and sought stay in Buddhas preachings of love and ahimsa. The war developed in him a hatred of all kinds of violence so he gave up pursuit and the slaughtering of animals. He became a strict vegetarian. His son, Mahinda, became a Theraveda monk and was sent to asseverate Buddhism to Sri Lanka. Asoka spent time piously retracing the steps of the Buddha and raising stupas inscribed with lesson injunctions and imperatives at holy places of pilgrimage, and for some two years he became a member of a Buddhist order without relinquishing his role as Emperor.     Asokas conversion to Buddhism, affected with the help of his own teacher, Upragupta, was gradual. Even though he did little to change the syste m of government he inherited, he introduced a novel and powerful moral idealism, which was a moral rule or way of life in the Buddhist sense, as he understood it. He called this the Law of Piety. This law, though following the tenets of the Buddha, was distinct from them and rummy to Asoka. It was to become one of the great turning points of the civilization of the East, having profound cause throughout the neighboring kingdoms, not least in