Book Review: Ashoka by Charles Allen
The emperor listed in the ancient Brahamanical Puranas as Ashoka raja, 'The King Without Sorrow', ruled over a united India some 2250 years ago.In his quest to govern India by moral force alone, India's Ashoka Maurya turned Buddhism from a minor sect into a world religion and set up a new yardstick for government. But his brave experiment ended in tragedy and his name was cleansed from the record so effectively that he was forgotten for almost two thousand years. Only a few mysterious stone monuments and inscriptions survived, and the story of how these keystones to the past were discovered and deciphered is every bit as remarkable as their author himself.
Emperor Ashoka or Ashoka the great is no more an unknown name in the world of history. On contrary, Emperor Ashoka who had ruled over the major part of the Indian subcontinent (then known as Jambudweep) from 270 BC to 233 BC, ranks in the same league with all other great names in history of the World. Available facts and fictions make life of Emperor Ashoka and the study of the grand Mauryan dynasty dramatic enough to hook the inquisitive reader. From popular myths and established facts we now know how Ashoka (Chandashoka - Ashoka the wrathful) had turned into (Dharmashoka - Ashoka the believer) after the massacre at Kalinga and had embraced Buddhism, spreading the religion of Sakyamuni Buddha within his empire and across. Dharmashoka is synonymous to the spread of Buddhism in India. Woven using collected pieces of surviving rock edicts, sculptures, Buddhist stupas, accounts of Huen Tsang and Fa Hien, an accepted history is now established. Sadly however, story of Ashoka had remained buried for around two thousand years, the discovery coinciding only with retracing of the Buddhist past in India.
Charles Allen in his book Ashoka -The Search for India's Lost Emperor meticulously presents these steps of retracing a grand era that had started with discovery of few mysterious monuments with inscriptions in an encoded script. Richly full of illustrative figures, this is a scholarly study of how historians and archaeologists had succeeded in mapping the historical clues to frame the forgotten epic of India's antiquity. If you have watched the Bollywood movie on Ashoka and expect a biography of the Emperor on a similar line, you will be disappointed though. Only portion of the last chapter focuses on the established biographies of the Mauryan dynasty while the remaining chapters focus on how the history was established. This is an absolute read if you have inclination towards researched non fiction focusing on this particular era of Indian history.
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A fascinating way of remembering history. I had received the copy from MySmartPrice. Thank you Ranjan for giving me this opportunity. You can buy this book at amazon or at flipkart in case you live in India.
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