Introduction

Aśoka's reign ushered in an era of major transformations in India's religious life. The 6th to 4th centuries BCE had witnessed, in the plains around the Ganges and Jumna rivers, the emergence of the first urban centers in South Asia since the Indus Valley Civilization. While the precise reasons and mechanisms for this development are not fully understood, it has long been taken for granted that it is not mere coincidence that it was accompanied by equally dramatic changes in the sphere of religion —especially the rise to prominence of ascetical movements. Although the precise origins of such movements are unknown, they appear on the scene in two species: one emerging from within the Brahmanical priestly religion that was already more than half a millennium old, and another comprising self-consciously anti-Brahmanical doctrines traced back to legendary teachers whose authority resided in their personal accomplishments (Gotama the Buddha, the ‘Enlightened’; Mahāvīera the Jina, the ‘Victor’). As this story is generally told, it is the Buddhists and the Jains who are in the limelight, bringing new ideas to an old world, challenging the cant and rigid orthodoxy of the brahmin priesthood, just as the early Christians were said to have exposed the hypocrisy and superficiality of Pharisaic piety. And rather as the new Christian vision was embraced and established in the Roman Empire by Constantine, the emperor Aśoka Maurya proclaimed the Buddha's dharma to be the religion of this new world.