Book review: Ashoka by Charles Allen

The ‘King without sorrow’ ruled over a united India 2250 years ago. It is his song, prosaically referred as the Ashokan Rock or Pillar Edicts written in India’s first written script, Ashoka Brahmi, that this book uncovers.

The rock edict RE7, is a written testament to the greatness of Ashoka, the great. His policy of ‘conquest by dharma alone’ makes him the rarest of rulers known in history to espouse such a policy.

Thanks to the spirit of curiosity originating in Europe in the last quarter of the eighteenth century India’s lost pre-Muslim history slowly started being recovered by a group of British orientalists cum antiquarians cum Indologists.

The book chronicles the rise and fall of the Mauryan empire through the wonderful trail of rock edicts, coins and most intriguing of all the eleven surviving edict pillars, which were at times confused and at times deliberately misrepresented as either the Shivalingam or even as Bheema’s staff (lat). As the history of many other monarchs, the Mauryan history had its own share of deceit, cold blooded murder and valour before its final downfall that led way to the Satavahanas dynasty, also known as the Andhras, who shaped the modern Deccan.

In the opening pages the writer draws out a wonderful parallel between the burning of the great library at Alexandria and that at Nalanda. In the latter case, it was followed by further destruction of the remaining two great Buddhist monasteries in Bengal, at Somapura and Jagadala.

Thanks to Charles Allen, he brings forth the herculean contribution of the late Sir William Jones, ‘now lying in a cemetery on the wrong end of Park Street’, Kolkata.

The author has chosen an investigative style of writing. This perpetuates into plots and sub-plots each interlinked to establish the rise and the fall of the Mauryan empire.

One such plot or chapter is ‘Enter Alexander’. Sir Jones’ efforts to zero down upon the identity of the river Erranoboas, referred to by Megasthenes, and the one Hiranyabahu (known today as river Sone), as in one of the Sanskrit texts, thereby establishing that the Greeks’ Palimbothra and ancient India’s Pataliputra are the same. A masterpiece in storytelling. Similarly, the subplot in this very chapter establishing that the Mudrarakshasha’s Chandragupta and the Greek’s Sandrokoptos were the same, is narrated as a thriller that keeps you turning the pages. This style of narration is uncommon for a book in the history genre.

The author’s research has been far and wide in establishing the legacy of Ashoka, the great. Charles Allen keeps the reader hooked chapter by chapter. He sets a perfect sense of excitement around the change of guard at the now dilapidated Jaffna port before going on to corroborate how the Great Dynastic Chronicle of Lanka further asserts the events in the land of Jambudweepa’s Magadha as mentioned in Mudrarakshash.

You are left in awe by the author when chapter after chapter he describes how the relentless pursuit of the orientalists, antiquarians, Indologists and numismatologists, such as James Prinsep (on whose name is the Prinsep Ghat at Kolkata) and George Turnour led to establishing the chain of events in the rise and fall of the great Mauryan empire, which expanded from modern Afghanistan in the north to the Deccan in the south.

You are left in awe as the author asserts through splendid research that the ‘minor rock edicts’ of Ashoka scattered across the Indian sub-continent form the oldest examples of Brahmi writing and thus written Prakrit, which was a predecessor to Pali and Sanskrit. And that the Brahmi alphabets of the Mauryans were itself a development from Kharosti, which was primarily based on Aramaic.

The book, Ashoka by Charles Allen is undoubtedly a scholarly work and there are phases when you do get tired of the huge flux of information. But its investigative style just hooks you long enough until you have made out that the great Ashoka was no exception to the traps of human desire and the great King spent his last days in despair though nominally on the throne.

A wonderful read!

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