A section from the journey

What Dhamma Meant to Ashoka

Ashoka's great word was dhamma, his form of the word dharma we have followed all along. But he gave it a new and public shape. For him dhamma meant non-violence to all beings, respect for parents and elders, honesty, generosity, and kindness even to servants and animals. Above all it meant tolerance: he asked every faith to honour every other. He cut the killing in his own kitchen almost to nothing. This was dharma turned into a way for many peoples to live together in peace.

We come now to the very heart of Ashoka's new way of ruling. And it rests on a single word, one we have carried with us for a very long time. The word is .

Dhamma is simply Ashoka's way of saying . Do you remember dharma? We first met its root long ago, in the deep order of the world the early seers called rta, and we watched it grow into the idea of right conduct, of living as one ought. Ashoka takes up that very word. But he does something new and large with it.

He does not use dhamma to mean one set of rites, or the rules of one faith alone. He uses it to mean a way of living well that anyone could follow, whatever god they prayed to. It is goodness made plain and shared. So what, in his own words, did this dhamma ask of people?

It asked them to do no harm to living things. To honour their mother and father, their elders and their teachers. To be truthful. To be generous. To treat servants, the poor, and even prisoners with kindness. A simple, decent way to live, the kind a grandmother might teach. But here it is a king teaching it, to a whole empire.

And Ashoka did not only preach this. He showed it in his own house first. The royal kitchen had once killed many thousands of animals every day, for the king's table. After his change of heart, he cut that killing almost to nothing. He had it carved plainly.

"Formerly, in the kitchen of King [the] Beloved of the Gods Priyadarsin, many hundred thousands of animals were killed daily for the sake of curry. But now, when this rescript on morality is caused to be written, then only three animals are being killed (daily), (viz.) two peacocks (and) one deer, but even this deer not regularly."

From many thousands a day, down to two peacocks and a deer, and soon, he hoped, none at all. This is the old idea of , doing no harm to any creature, which we first met among the forest seekers and the Jain teachers. There it was a vow for monks. Here it becomes the example of an emperor, and the wish of a state.

But of all the parts of Ashoka's dhamma, one shines brightest, and feels most surprising for a king so long ago. It is tolerance. Ashoka did not tell his people to all believe the same thing. He told them to respect one another's faiths. He even warned that to praise your own religion by running down another's is to harm your own. Hear his own words.

"For whosoever praises his own sect or blames other sects, — all (this) out of pure devotion to his own sect, (i.e.) with the view of glorifying his own sect, — if he is acting thus, he rather injures his own sect very severely."

Read that twice. More than two thousand years ago, a ruler of a vast and mixed empire carved into stone that the way to honour your own faith is to honour your neighbour's too. He himself leaned toward the Buddha's teaching, yet he asked respect for all. This is among the oldest pleas for tolerance written anywhere in the world.

So watch what has become of our old word. Dharma began as the deep order of the stars and the rite. It grew into right conduct for a single soul. And now, in Ashoka's hands, it is lifted higher still, into a shared way for many different peoples to live together in peace. That is a new thing in this story. We will see, in the very next telling, how he turned this ideal into roads, wells, and care for the sick.

Ashoka believed that you honour what you love most not by tearing down what others love, but by respecting it. Think of something you hold dear, a belief, a team, a way of life. How does it feel to defend it without speaking ill of anyone else's? Is that harder, or in the end stronger?