Açoka has left us a notice of the philosophic missions which he sent to the realms of five of Alexander’s successors in the second generation, but no record of his emissaries’ activities has come to us from their mission field, and, whatever their fortunes may have been, they made no discernible effect upon the history of Mankind. In seeking to propagate the philosophy of Siddhārtha Gautama beyond the western limits of his own Mauryan Peace, Açoka was unlucky in his generation, for the Achaemenian Peace, which had proved so conductive a medium for Judaism and Zoroastrianism, and had perhaps conveyed to the Hellenic World the Zoroastrian and Indic elements that are to be found in Orphism, had been broken up by force of Macedonian arms two generations before Açoka’s time, and the anarchy that racked the Syriac and Hellenic worlds, with little intermission, from this break-up of the Achaemenian Peace to the establishment of the Roman Peace was particularly unpropitious for missionary work.
A Study of History, Vol VII, OUP, 1954
April 27 2012 at 10:27 am
Nearly three hundred years after Ashoka had published his edicts in India in Greek, Aramaic and local Prakrits, spiritual voyages, in both directions, were taking place between Syria and the Indus area, involving numerous ascetics and holy men. We know for example of a Graeco-Syrian preacher and healer: Apollonius of Thiana, a contemporary of Christ. A number of terracotta figurines in the Kabul Museum representing Buddhist holy ascetics bear close resemblances with the image of Christ. Figures of pilgrims have the same attributes as the pilgrims of Compostella. Later, travels to the Indus are mentioned by Pseudo Palladius (4th century).
Ashoka, sometimes described as the Buddhist Constantine, in three of his edicts (Rock Edicts II, V and XIII), engraved on rocks and still extant, declared that he had established a ministry of religious affairs (Dharma-mahamatra) to promote moral and religious life among the people, and that he had sent successful “Missions of Piety” to Greek territories in addition to various parts of his own empire. He mentions, as Toynbee says, five Greek kings to whom these missions were sent. They have been identified as Antiochus II of Syria (261-246 B.C.), Ptolemy II of Egypt (285-247 B.C.), Antigonas Gonatas of Macedonia (276-246 B.C.), Magas of Cyrene (300-258 B.C.) and Alexander of Epirus (272-258 B.C.).
There can be no reasonable doubt that Ashoka’s envoys or “missionaries” (Duta) spread a knowledge of Buddhism in these Greek territories, where Judaism was already known. A few years ago an Edict of Ashoka in both Greek and Aramaic was discovered in Afghanistan. (Aramaic was the language of Christ.) Very recently another edict in Greek only, not yet published, was discovered in the same country. Its contents are similar to those of Ashoka’s “Edicts of Dharma” (Dharmalipi) discovered in India, and recently published by Giovanni Pugliese Caratelli. It is possible that many of Ashoka’s Indian edicts were published simultaneously in Aramaic, Prakrit and Greek.
See writings of the Venerable Dr. Walpola Rahula (1907–1997) and others.
April 27 2012 at 5:12 pm
Many thanks. Very interesting and useful.