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to the recognised ideal of the Christian life. Asoka, precisely as in the parallel case of Constantine, embraced a cause so far successful that it seemned on the verge of victory. And it is not at all unlikely that reasons of state may have had their share in influencing Asoka, just as they certainly did in the case of Constantine.
It was not only within the boundaries of his own empire that Asoka tried to spread the Dhamma. In the thirteenth Edict, in about 255 B.C., addressed to his sons and grandsons, after declaring that he himself found pleasure rather in conquests by the Dhamma than in conquests by the sword, he says that he had already made such conquests in the realms of the kings of Syria, Egypt, Macedonia, Epirus, and Kyrené, among the Cholas and Pāņdyas in South India, in Ceylon, and among a nuinber of peoples dwelling in the borders of his empire.
“Everywhere” he adds, "men conform to the instructions of the King as regards the Dhamma; and even where the emissaries of the King go not, there, when they have heard of the King's Dhamma, the folk conform themselves, and will conform themselves, to the duties of the Dhamma, that dyke against . . . [here the context is lost].
It is difficult to say how much of this is mere royal rhodomontade. It is quite likely that the Greek kings are only thrown in by way of makeweight, as it were; and that no emissaries had been actually sent there at all. Even had they been sent,
| Sce Professor IIarily's A soka: Ein-Charakter-Bild, etc., p. 30.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
