The most powerful king to have ever lived isn't Genghis Khan, William the Conqueror,
or Augustus Caesar as you might think. No, it's someone you probably haven't even heard of,
who ruled an empire you also probably haven't heard of. Here's why.
Genghis Khan is usually the knee-jerk answer to the most powerful king question,
but there are a number of reasons why he doesn't fit the bill. Sure,
he ruled over around nine million square miles, but most of his territory was just empty land.
Thus, he only ruled over around 1 million subjects, unless you count all the horses.
And if you're using the number of subjects as a benchmark for a monarch's power, well,
that means Queen Elizabeth II was around 130 times more powerful when she took the throne in 1953.
Khan's time on the throne wasn't really long enough to score him any "most powerful"
points either. Queen Elizabeth has been on the throne for 68 years,
but Khan only ruled for a couple of decades. So,
you also can't really use time on the throne as a benchmark for assessing relative power.
Now just to be clear, we're not saying that Queen Elizabeth II is history's
most powerful monarch, because most of her power is symbolic.
But if you just compare her stats to those of the Mongol conqueror, it becomes
pretty clear that Genghis was not really as powerful as history has made him out to be.
The honor of the most powerful king in history belongs to an obscure monarch called
Ashoka. You've heard of him, right? No? It's okay,
because not a lot of people have heard of this guy. Hollywood never even made a
blockbuster film about him. Fortunately, Ashoka did get the Bollywood treatment.
He's not really the kind of king that the average college history professor likes to wax poetic
about, either. And yet this guy ruled over 44 percent of the world's population at one point.
But how do you define power? You could say that power is derived from fear,
and if that's true then that makes a stronger case for Genghis Khan. But while
Genghis was good at ruling by fear, Ashoka was really good at winning hearts and minds.
Ashoka's way of ruling contributed to the longevity of his reign,
as well as his ability to hang onto so much territory. From 269 BC to 232 BC,
Ashoka ruled the Mauryan [MORE-ee-un] Empire, which included everything from what is now
Iran in the northwest, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, all the way through India to
Bangladesh in the east. And in case you're not wowed by the vastness of his empire, at the
time all of those lands accounted for roughly half of the world's Gross Domestic Product.
To be fair, the Mauryan empire wasn't all Ashoka's doing. His grandfather,
Chandragupta, established it in 321 BC after Alexander the Great died and left a void in the
region's power structure. Seeing an opportunity, Chandragupta conquered Punjab in the north of
India. Since there's nothing conquerors love quite so much as conquering, Chandragupta
went on to seize territory in the southern and eastern parts of the Indian subcontinent as well.
Chandragupta passed his love of land-grabbing onto his son Bindusara, who took the throne
after his father's death in 297 BC and ruled the Mauryan empire for a quarter century.
This is a long time for any king, since ancient kings all over the world were
constantly under threat from things like assassination and battle wounds. Still,
Bindusara's reign pales in comparison to his son's, who not only went on to grab even more
territory but also ruled over all of it for more than a decade longer than his father did.
Ancient historical events often blur with legend, because few authoritative documents
from the era remain. So keep in mind that we don't really know for sure exactly what
went down on the Indian subcontinent during the Mauryan Empire, because CNN wasn't a thing yet.
But based on what we do know, it's actually pretty remarkable that Ashoka got anywhere
near the throne. Apparently, his mother was a commoner and everyone knows that people
with common blood can't give birth to kings. Other sources say, though,
that she was the daughter of a Brahmin, and the Brahmins were way up high in the caste system.
This would have made her a perfectly worthy mother to an emperor,
except that Bindusara apparently didn't like the son to whom she’d given birth.
Either way, Ashoka was not considered for the throne. He also had several older half-brothers,
so his father had plenty of heirs to choose from without having to consider the one he disliked.
Ashoka did have a couple of things going for him. First of all he was a mean kid.
And not just a "takes other kids' ice cream cones" kind of mean,
either. Ashoka was cruel. According to legend, he killed a lion with a stick,
which is pretty impressive for anyone to pull off without, you know, dying.
Ashoka distinguished himself enough that Bindushara let him do stuff like squash a
rebellion at the tender age of 18. His father then appointed him Governor of Avanti Province
and stationed him in the capital city of Ujjain. Meanwhile his brothers back home were starting to
worry about their competent sibling and his potential place in the line of succession.
So things were going pretty swimmingly for Ashoka, until his brothers became so jealous
of his potential that they convinced Bindusara to exile him. The emperor failed to see through their
petty whining and did what he was told, sending Ashoka off to Kalinga on the east coast of India.
Kalinga wasn't even part of his father's domain at the time,
but Ashoka still managed to do okay there.
Unfortunately for Ashoka's half-brothers, kings who do a lot of conquering tend to have subjects
that occasionally rebel. That's exactly what happened in Ujjain while Ashoka was busy being
exiled. Recognizing that he needed help to quash the uprising, Bindusara summoned Ashoka
back from exile and Ashoka rewarded his father's gamble by successfully crushing the rebellion.
Ashoka's victory in Ujjain didn't come without cost. The prince was wounded in battle,
and ended up in the care of local Buddhist monks.
The monks were partly concerned with helping Ashoka recover and partly concerned with hiding
him from his older brother Susima who was very much out to get him.
Ashoka likely converted to Buddhism while in the care of the monks. However,
another version of the story says he was introduced to Buddhism by Devi,
a woman who may or may not have been his wife, but who did bear him two children — a boy and a girl.
At the time, Buddhism was still pretty obscure in this part of the world, so Ashoka's decision
to convert was likely a very big deal. However, exactly when he converted has gotten mixed up
in all the different retellings. But it was an important turning point for the future king,
and part of what contributed to the power he was able to wield later in life.
Eventually, Bindusara ended up on his deathbed. And despite everything his
younger son had done in his name, the old king still wanted Ashoka's brother
Susima to succeed him. However, the older brother was disliked by Bindusara's ministers,
and they plotted to install Ashoka on the throne after the emperor finally kicked the bucket.
When the dust finally cleared, it was Ashoka on the throne instead of Susima.
Ashoka's brothers weren't very happy with the turn of events, and his ascension was followed
by a two-year war. Ashoka was victorious, and he had Susima burned alive in a charcoal pit.
That's not all, though. Ashoka murdered all of his brothers, except the youngest one who
prudently decided to renounce his claim to the throne and become a Buddhist monk.
Once Ashoka was settled onto the throne, there wasn't a whole lot of the Indian subcontinent left
to conquer, except for the southernmost tip of India and Kalinga on the east coast.
So eight years after he became emperor, Ashoka launched a shiny new war campaign,
and at the end of it became the proud owner of one seaside territory and around 200,000
corpses. Ashoka found the hundreds of thousands of casualties too much to bear.
He later wrote that he was,
"deeply pained by the killing, dying,
and deportation that takes place when an unconquered country is conquered."
Even so, we’re not sure his remorse was much comfort for the remaining peasants.
"I don't know that"
His change of heart was also a bit strange given that he personally executed something like
500 political rivals during the war that preceded his ascension. For some reason all that killing
never troubled him. Ashoka entered this Buddhist pacifism stage a bit too late for 200,000+ people,
but at least he swore off violence permanently after it was all over.
After the Battle of Kalinga, Ashoka basically went around telling everyone how awesome Buddhism was,
and people mostly listened. Ashoka actually had a genuine change of heart and made it his
mission to use his great power and influence to spread the message of Buddhism across India.
Now, most ordinary people who embrace religion and adopt a missionary life only manage to
reach a handful of people. But Ashoka ruled over nearly half of the world's population,
so that made his job a lot easier. He didn't just spread the word of the Buddha throughout India,
he also sent emissaries to places like Greece, Syria, and Sri Lanka. He also helped transform
Buddhism from an obscure religion into one of the more dominant faiths on the Indian subcontinent.
Ashoka seemed to genuinely believe what he was telling people, or at least he was smart
enough to be a Buddhist king in action as well as in word. He worked hard to spread
Buddhism across the realm, but he didn't force it on anyone. In fact he had a pretty strict
policy of religious tolerance, which you don't expect to see in the ancient world.
He was also smart enough to know that if people are going to listen to you, you have to speak
their language. One of the things Ashoka is most remembered for is the edicts he had carved into
stone pillars and other monuments across his domain, always in the local dialect.
Ashoka also seemed to genuinely care about his subjects. He ruled with kindness,
and would often travel his domain to make sure that his subjects were okay,
or as okay as anyone could be in 3rd century BC poverty. Ashoka also did work towards improving
everyone's living conditions. In addition to all the new Buddhist temples he put up,
he also built and maintained roads and helped bring irrigation to arid regions.
Ashoka worked to build a prosperous, peaceful realm, but it didn't last.
The Mauryan empire collapsed less than 50 years after Ashoka's death.
Its demise didn't have anything to do with Ashoka's peaceful policies or his strength as
a ruler. It was more due to the fact that the empire was divided up amongst his grandsons,
whose chaotic intertwined reigns made the whole thing fizzle. Ashoka’s 40-year reign
was mostly forgotten, at least for a couple of thousand years.
Ashoka's story was preserved in obscure religious texts that were
compiled a few hundred years after his death. But like Buddhism itself,
these stories gradually faded from Indian consciousness in the centuries that followed.
In fact, if it wasn't for the edicts that Ashoka had carved into stone pillars,
he might have been forgotten forever. But in 1833 a British scholar named James Prinsep
got curious about all of those stone pillars, and made it his mission to figure out what they said.
With the help of a scholar of Buddhist history, Prinsep found the name “Ashoka” in an ancient
religious text and connected it to the author of the pillar inscriptions. As a result,
we finally know the name Ashoka today. If only Hollywood would make that blockbuster movie.
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