Why has Ashoka lost out to Ayan and Ahaan?

William Dalrymple, assiduously building up anticipation for his forthcoming historical opus The Golden Road—his first real foray into classical India after many books dwelling on British and Mughal times—recently devoted an episode in his popular podcast Empire (with Anita Anand) to Ashoka, one of the ‘heroes’ of his new work. Dalrymple’s selective use of “sources” (all from centuries later) to tell a racy and wildly fanciful story is entertaining, but not history.

Apart from his insouciant mispronunciation of all multisyllabic ancient Indian names—like Bindusara, Pataliputra, Shravanabelagola—his adding a European (white) angle to even ancient Indian history is annoying. He tosses in the old (and dessicated) chestnut that Chandragupta married a Seleucid princess although no account (even Greek) specifically says so. So, his insinuation that the ‘Great’ Ashoka was partly Greek can only convince a credulous Anita Anand.

Needless to add, the podcast did little to draft me into the Ashoka Fan Club but the Anand-Dalrymple duet did bring to mind a few questions, given my personal interest. Going by the lofty pronouncements in his edicts, why was this great monarch lost to collective memory? Why are most Ashoks that we know today over 50 years old, clearly remnants of a phase when a few generations of Indians got swayed by 19th and 20th century narratives of a great ancient king?

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My father’s name was Asok, one of the most popular monikers of his generation, born in the early 20th century. It was spelt the same way as the geeky Indian character in the Dilbert comic strip but predated him by nearly 70 years. Asok was the default spelling of the name only in Bengal; the rest of India added an ‘h’ to it to indicate a softer enunciation of the ‘s’. Some even added an ‘e’ at the end to elongate the ‘o’ sound in the name. We shall stick to “Ashok”.

My father attended a smallish district school in what was then East Bengal and never mentioned any other Ashoks there, but once he moved to Calcutta for college, he had three other classmates with the same name. There were many more studying other subjects. Later on, there were several Ashoks who qualified as uncles in the Indian system of familial co-option, being my father’s civil service colleagues or friends. There were even a few aunties named Ashoka.

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By the time I attended a co-ed school in New Delhi in the penultimate decade of the 20th century, there were no Ashoks in my class although there were a couple in the batch. College was not co-ed, but were there no Ashokas either. Early in my career there were several colleagues—contemporaries and seniors—named Ashok. By the beginning of the 21st century, there were none. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that it was a similar progression elsewhere in India.

This chronology highlights the curious trajectory of the fortunes of the first Ashoka, invariably spelt with an arcane ‘a’ at the end to distinguish him from contemporary Indians with the same name. He lived in the 3rd century BCE, did great things, if apocryphal Buddhist and Greek accounts are to be believed. Ashoka then sank into oblivion—till he was resurrected by British scholars in the 19th century; and in the 20th century, Indians named boys after him.

Several Puranas cite Ashoka in their genealogical tables but he does not stand out in any way. His name features in Buddhist texts, especially those in Sri Lanka (eagerly quoted aplenty by Dalrymple, incidentally) but is largely ignored in Jambudvipa texts until Kalhana mentions him in the 12th century Rajatarangini. Crucially, no later Indian kings took on that moniker, though some royal names have recurred across centuries and dynasties, so there was a precedent.

One royal name that has survived for millennia (without enthusiastic canvassing by European historians) is Aditya. Though the Chola dynasty had two kings called Aditya in the 9th and 10th centuries, it was often used in conjunction with another name. For instance, Vikramaditya was a title taken by a 4th century Gupta emperor, there was also a 7th century Chalukya king by that name. And there is one even now: the Yuvraj of the erstwhile kingdom of Kashmir.

But India had a 2,300-year gap between Ashoka, the chakravartin (emperor) and the next Ashoks in the 20th century. What did he do (or not do) that made him persona non grata for so long? Could his name—one without sorrow—have had a different connotation in his time? Of course, it could indeed indicate an elevated state of being, a detachment worthy of an enlightened soul, which is the meaning that later adulatory Buddhist texts attribute to the man and the name.

That is probably why millions of educated Indians, including my grandparents, named their sons Ashok. They must have done so out of sheer admiration for his extraordinary deeds, as revealed by historians in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Just like later Indians named their sons Rohan, Sunil or Sachin after exploits on the cricket pitch became the successor to heroics on the battlefield. No one really looked too hard at the definition of Ashok, or at the man himself.

The question of whether “without sorrow” was an ancient euphemism for “cruel” has never been considered although the fearsome epithet Chandashoka had been used to describe his pre-Buddhist phase. Could he have referred to himself only as Devanampiya and Piyadasi to correct his tainted image as Ashoka? His subjects could have concluded that only someone without any ‘shok’ (sorrow) could ruthlessly kill all his close male relatives to capture the throne.

Not that his kingly exploits were on par even with Sunil or Sachin’s cricketing achievements. Though deemed a chakravartin, Kalinga is the only battle he is known to have actually fought. That too, it was more of a reconquest because his grandfather Chandragupta had probably annexed it earlier. In fact, Ashoka’s Magadha empire was pretty much the same as what his father left behind. So his greatness lay elsewhere: in his sustained propagation of Buddhism.

Yet Ashoka is one of only two Indian rulers whom colonial era historians anointed as ‘The Great’, based on their analysis of his edicts (only two of which mention him by that name) and later approbation in Buddhist texts. The other is the Mughal emperor, Akbar. Among those left out of that ‘Great Kings Club’ were Chandragupta Maurya, Kanishka, Harshavardhana, Samudragupta, Gautamiputra Satakarni, Rajaraja and Rajendra Chola and Krishnadeva Raya.

It may be noted that Harsh(a) and Kanishk(a) are the only other ancient royal names in use in modern India today, but they too have never attained the popularity Ashok(a) did in his heyday. Those kings, especially from the classical age, suffered from the same disadvantage as Ashoka: scant reliable primary sources for details and perspective. Like Dalrymple’s pronouncements in his Ashoka podcast, too much depended on selective interpretations.

Despite sketchy sources, Ashoka was lucky enough to get a fillip from European academia; Dalrymple is continuing that tradition. No wonder Indians happily named their sons. Ashok: they were dazzled by his persona, as resurrected by Europeans who were a bit in love with him themselves. It may not be entirely coincidental that no Hindu kings were deemed suitable for the ‘Great’ suffix despite military, administrative, cultural and spiritual achievements.

Unsurprisingly, the question of whether someone “without sorrow” could also be cruel never arose. Was Chandashoka a more accurate description of him than ever contemplated? Could that be why he preferred to refer to himself as Devanampiya and Piyadasi, not Ashoka? Maybe he did not want its meaning to be misunderstood, as his subjects could surmise that only someone without any ‘shok’ (sorrow) could ruthlessly kill all his brothers to become king.

I am left with even more questions. The Islamic period completed Ashoka’s descent into oblivion but why has the momentum gained by the name in the 20th century not continued in the current era of short and sweet ‘A-list’ names such as Ahaan, Ayan and Aarav? Even before counter narratives to the ‘Ashoka the Great’ line appeared, why had the name been relegated to the B list? Will Dalrymple be able to revive Ashok(a) with his compelling if often tendentious prose?

The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.