ASHOKA’S BEHAVIOR BELIES HIS PROPOGANDA
By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)
(Based on data from Decoding Ashoka’s Legacy by Odd Compass);
ASHOKA SAID HIS LOW-CASTE MOM WAS THE DAUGHTER OF A BRAHMAN
Ashoka was born in 304 BCE, in a Mauryan palace already thick with palace intrigue and class anxiety.
Later chroniclers said his mother, Subhadrangi, was the daughter of a Brahmin family. But the earlier stories—before they were edited for political respectability—said she was a low-caste hairdresser.
Ashoka, in this retelling, tightened his jaw, telling himself: “I rise because destiny bends toward me.”
He always felt he had something to prove. He was not the heir to Maurya’s Throne; his half-brother SUSIMA held that place.
Ashoka bore the stigma of an “ugly” child—short, pudgy, rough-skinned, with a disfigured face. The chronicles say EMPEROR BINDUSARA dismissed him as unfit to represent the dynasty.
But Ashoka grew into a brilliant, decisive, murderous leader.
ASHOKA KILLED HIS BROTHERS TO SUCCEED EMPEROR BINDUSARA
TAKSHILA, a frontier city bristling with wealth, Greeks and Persians, revolted. Bindusara sent the “ugly prince” to tame it, perhaps expecting failure.
Ashoka entered the rebellious city with soldiers who muttered prayers to Enlil-like war gods. He himself thought: “Let them see what this face can do.”
Ashoka negotiated, coerced, or massacred the rebels, and Takshila submitted to him. The victory put him on the political map. Reward followed: he became viceroy of the province of Ujjain, ruling decisively, attracting ministers who whispered, “He is stronger than Susima.” We do not know whether Ashoka negotiated, coerced, or massacred the rebels—but Takshila submitted.
The victory put him on the political map. Reward followed: he became viceroy of Ujjain, ruling decisively, attracting ministers who whispered: “He is stronger than Susima, Bindusara’s heir.”
When Bindusara fell ill in 272 BCE, both princes raced home. Ashoka arrived first. Susima tried to siege the city, but someone killed him—some sources say mercenaries in Ashoka’s service threw Susima into a pit of burning charcoal.
Over the next four years, Ashoka eliminated almost all brothers with competing claims. Only his younger brother, Tissa, survived.
When the bloodshed ended, he crowned himself with the regnal name Priyadarshi—“He who is pleasant to behold.” Even the courtiers flinched at the irony.
THE POPULAR TALE—AND THE HISTORICAL LIE
The sanitized legend says Ashoka was vicious until the Kalinga War, when he saw bodies heaped across the battlefield and repented, converting to Buddhism in horror. This spin was propaganda; Ashoka had been practicing Buddhism for years before the Kalinga war, and his actual records show no repentance for the region he devastated.
The sanitized legend says Ashoka was vicious until the Kalinga War, when he saw bodies heaped across the battlefield and repented, converting to Buddhism in horror. Two problems: 1) He was already practicing Buddhism years before, 2) His records show no repentance in the actual region he devastated.
Ashoka narrated his own propaganda. His edicts admit that contradictions in wording were intentional political manipulations. In Kalinga he said nothing about regret—only in faraway regions where the people were easier to impress. Even worse, one “repentance edict” includes this chilling line: “To tribal peoples and troublesome groups, I am able to do again what I did in Kalinga.” That is not remorse. That is a threat.
Ashoka traveled incognito—like a paranoid emperor straight out of Enlil’s dominator playbook—to sample the public mood. The people had begun calling him Chandashoka—Ashoka the Terrible.
ASHOKA THE BUREAUCRATIC AUTOCRAT
Ashoka ruled for 38 years, keeping the empire stable—but at extreme cost. Stability came through a bloated, suffocating bureaucracy enforced by the Dhamma-Mahamātras, 81,000 officials whose reach extended everywhere: soldiers’ barracks, village courts, households, women’s quarters, prisons, and temples. These administrators could punish “improper conduct” and reward “righteous behavior,” a moral surveillance state reminiscent of imperial China—and of modern authoritarian regimes. Ashoka expanded bureaucracy so much that it consumed a quarter of all tax revenue. Corruption festered.
The moment Ashoka died, half the empire rebelled—Kalinga, the South, and more.
ASHOKA’S RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE—BEHIND THE FACADE
Yes, Ashoka patronized Buddhism and sent missionaries as far as Egypt and Greece. He banned Hindu rituals such as animal sacrifice under threat of punishment.
Sri Lanka’s conversion traces to him, and that changed all of Southeast Asia.
But evidence makes the darker truth unavoidable:
He ordered 18,000 Ajivikas massacred for an offensive drawing of the Buddha.
He had a Jain artist and his family burned alive and put a bounty on every Jain head, paying one silver coin per kill—until his brother Tissa died in the blowback.
He preached tolerance in edicts—but practiced domination on the ground. He weaponized dharma to secure absolute obedience.
ASHOKA AS REFORMER, BUILDER, AND SELF-PROMOTER
- Legal reforms allowing appeals before execution
• Wildlife preserves and animal protection
• Educational opportunities for women
• Roads, hospitals, universities, irrigation works
But—any emperor ruling 38 years would have done the same. There is no evidence that he excelled beyond what a typical ruler would do.
Archaeology even shows that prosperity rose after his death, when the bureaucratic weight lifted.
Karavela of Kalinga reclaimed stolen Jain idols and carved his victory into rock above Ashoka’s own edicts—symbolic revenge from a people who did not believe Ashoka’s repentance myth any more than Americans who doubt that Trump has transcended his crimes.
WHY INDIA ELEVATED ASHOKA
Modern India, a vast union of cultures and languages, needed a unifying emblem after independence. Ashoka fit the political needs of his era; he was Northern; he was fulfilling his destiny (karma). He ruled the largest pre-modern Indian empire. He preached [though he didn’t practice] tolerance.
The “sanitized” Ashoka—the peaceful Buddhist emperor—became a national symbol, even though the historical Ashoka was a violent, self-glorifying autocrat who used Buddhism the way modern demagogues like Trump, Putin, Erogin, Orban, Mohammed bin Salman, and Ali Khamenei use Christianity and Islam for power disguised as spiritual piety. He preached tolerance in edicts—but practiced domination on the ground. Domination consciousness weaponized Ashoka’ s dharma to secure absolute obedience from his subjects.
Ashoka’s real legacy is mixed—but his religious impact was enormous, and his propaganda astonishingly successful.
PREVIEW: THE BUDDHIST WAVE
In our next installment, we follow the Buddhist wave Ashoka generated—how he weaponized monks much like Trump weaponizes ICE, the Pentagon, and politicized Christianity.
We will explore:
- How Ashoka’s missionaries reshaped Sri Lanka
• How the Mauryan “dhamma bureaucracy” outlived the empire
• How Ashoka’s domination machinery often crushed Buddhism’s partnership impulses
• And how the Anunnaki Enlil-pattern replicates across cultures—until counter-currents rise again
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