"If we are victorious in one more
battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined”, said Pyrrhus in 280 BC
after their war against the Romans. A victory that brings enormous losses of
life and limb and property and leaves little to cheer about is called Pyrrhic victory.
One such victory happened long time ago,
when one of India’s greatest Kings, Ashoka, waged a war against the kalinga.
This victory was to create a new ideal for Kings to live up to and today, more
than two thousand years later, there are only handfuls in the world history who
can claim to be treated at par.
Victory makes us rejoice and defeat,
pensive. With King Ashoka, it was just the opposite. As he went through the
battle ground and the cities, he saw only corpses and burnt houses and uttered
the famous monologue:
What have I done? If this is a
victory, what's a defeat then? Is this a victory or a defeat? Is this justice
or injustice? Is it gallantry or a rout? Is it valor to kill innocent children
and women? Do I do it to widen the empire and for prosperity or to destroy the
other's kingdom and splendor? One has lost her husband, someone else a father,
someone a child, someone an unborn infant.... What's this debris of the
corpses? Are these marks of victory or defeat? Are these vultures, crows,
eagles the messengers of death or evil?
And something changed in him, and with
him changed the course of India. He abandoned warfare in the full tide of
victory. He embraced the tenets of Buddhism and devoted himself to the spread
of Buddha’s teachings. His messengers went far off places like Syria, Egypt,
Macedonia, Cyrene, Epirus and also to Burma, Siam and Ceylon. Everywhere an
appeal was made to mind and the heart and yet it was only an appeal and there
was no compulsion. He showed respect and consideration for all other faiths and
proclaimed in an edict ‘All sects deserve reverence for one reason or another. By
thus acting a man exalts his own sect and at the same time does service to the
sects of other people’. We hear a similar voice again almost one thousand years
later in India, the voice of Akbar. Indeed it was the voice of India.
Ashoka the Great was born in 304 BC to
King Bindusara in Pataliputra, now Patna. He was grandson of Chandragupta
Maurya. He became King in 274 BC and his reign lasted till 232 BC. His empire
stretched from Afghanistan to Assam, Myanmar and Bangladesh, from Central Asia
to Tamil Nadu. This has been the largest spread of Indian empire ever. Neither
the Mughal Empire nor the British Empire was as big in administrative
influence. And nothing of it changed, when he took to the path of love and
renounced war. Ashoka died in 232 BC after ruling strenuously for forty one
years. Of him H G Wells says in his Outline of History:
Amidst the tens of thousands of names
of monarchs that crowd the columns of history, their majesties and graciousness
and serenities and royal highness and the like, the name of Ashoka shines, and
shines almost alone, a star. From the Volga to Japan his name is still honored.
China, Tibet and even India, though it has left his doctrine, preserve the
tradition of his greatness. More living men cherish his memory today than have
ever heard the names of Constantine or Charlemagne.
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