32. Pillar of Ashoka (India, about 238 BC)

Ashoka! Since MacGregor on Alexander got me reminiscing about dumb movies I’ve seen, the same is true of Ashoka; we had an endless Bollywood epic, full of mediocre songs and splashy dance sequences, about ten years ago at our Seattle International Film Festival. (Michael Wood somehow got rights to quote this film in his The Story of India PBS/BBC deal...a watchable program, if not revelatory.) I remember Asoka trying to show the conversion of this interesting character from a bloodthirsty tyrant, typical warlord, to a benevolent figure enlightened by the same Eastern wisdom that would empower both Buddhism and Hinduism; in the case of the film’s plot, as I remember, the conversion was driven by Ashoka realizing he was responsible for the death of his own children, that kind of thing. (Memory is a bit vague, sorry.) MacGregor doesn’t recall a reason for the conversion, but he’s clearly entranced by the concept of a warlord who becomes a figure of benevolence, and that’s what this pillar was about: an edict, the word from the ruler, that went out (they didn’t have newspapers in those days) carved on these little rocks that they’d set up in all the major crossroads and/or market areas. Others have been found with this same inscription on it. MacGregor compares Ashoka’s approach to that of the current leadership of Bhutan, where there’s this beautiful idea of measuring Gross National Happiness, instead of Gross National Product. I think it’s a line of thought that’s worth pursuing.

But the Doubting Thomas in me (the part of my brain that generally calls the shots) can’t help but suspect that MacGregor & Co’s enthusiasm for Ashoka, or the Indus Valley civilization at Mohenjo-Daro, or later enthusiasm about Buddhism, may not itself be a bit Disney, a bit romanticized, exaggerated. I find it remarkable that on my favorite TV show, The Simpsons, Apu is the only truly good person in the city of Springfield. Really? Occasionally the show makes fun of him, but morally he’s generally unimpeachable. I’m not saying that’s impossible; yet it feels like a reaction, an apology or an amendment for past generations of ignorant racism and offensive stereotyping. Yes, India created the Buddha, and the later Ashoka with his interest in world peace, and Gandhi; but Ashoka was king because his grandfather, Chandragupta Maurya, was a mini-Alexander the Great (apparently met Alexander when he set foot in India), a warlord who conquered enough peoples and lands to put together the first big country in that part of the world...the man who created, more or less (less the Moslems and the British) modern India. The Indian national character isn’t all peace and benevolence...they wrote and love the Mahabharata, a national epic which is at least as bloody and depressing as the Illiad.

I’m not trying to defend racist images of India like those familiar to me from Cary Grant in Gunga Din or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, or the still-baffling line in my father’s childhood book of Richard Halliburton’s Book of Marvels, which I inherited and loved as a kid: “I say that any religion which builds a church like Reims Cathedral, or a tomb like the Taj Mahal, must be a greater and finer religion than one which builds the Temple of Madura.” Will we ever get to a place where we can present both the good and the bad? Or is that simply a Western way of thinking, and if you’ve got those categories already set up in your brain, you’ll never get the point?