Fields of Blood (14 page)

Already during the Buddha’s lifetime, there were signs of empire building in the Gangetic plain. In 493 BCE
Ajatashatru became king of
Magadha; it was said that, impatient for the throne, he had murdered his father, King
Bimbisara, the Buddha’s friend. Ajatashatru continued his father’s policy of military conquest and built a small fort on the Ganges, which the Buddha visited shortly before his death; it later became the famous metropolis of
Pataliputra. Ajatashatru also annexed
Koshala and
Kashi and defeated a confederacy of tribal republics, so that when he died in 461, the Kingdom of Magadha dominated the Gangetic plain. He was succeeded by five unsatisfactory kings, all parricides, until the usurper
Mahapadma Nanda, a shudra, founded the first non-Kshatriya dynasty and further extended the borders of the kingdom. The wealth of the Nandas, based on a highly efficient
taxation system, became proverbial and the idea of creating an imperial state began to take root. When the young adventurer
Chandragupta Maurya, another shudra, usurped the Nanda throne in 321 BCE, the Kingdom of Magadha became the
Mauryan Empire.

In the premodern period, no empire could create a unified culture; it existed solely to extract resources from the subject peoples, who would
inevitably rise up from time to time in revolt. Thus an emperor was usually engaged in almost constant warfare against rebellious subjects or against aristocrats who sought to usurp him. Chandragupta and his successors ruled from Pataliputra, conquering neighboring regions that had strategic and economic potential by force of arms. These areas were incorporated into the Mauryan state and administered by governors who answered to the emperor. On the fringes of the empire, peripheral areas rich in timber, elephants, and semiprecious stones, served as buffer zones; the imperial state did not attempt direct rule in these areas but used local people as agents to tap their resources; periodically these “forest peoples” resisted Mauryan dominance. The main task of the imperial administration was to collect taxes in kind. In India, the rate of taxation varied from region to region, ranging from one-sixth to one-quarter of agricultural output.
Pastoralists were taxed according to the size and productivity of their herds, and
commerce was subject to taxes, tolls, and custom dues. The crown claimed ownership of all uncultivated land, and once an area had been cleared, shudras living in overpopulated regions of the Mauryan Empire were forcibly resettled there.
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The empire, therefore, depended entirely on extortion and force. Not only did military campaigns increase the wealth of the state by acquiring more arable land, but plunder was an important supplementary revenue, and prisoners of war provided valuable manpower. It may therefore seem strange that the first three Mauryan emperors were patrons of nonviolent sects. Chandragupta abdicated in 297 BCE to become a
Jain ascetic; his son
Bindusara courted the strictly ascetical
Ajivaka school; and
Ashoka, who succeeded to the throne in about 268 after murdering two of his brothers, favored the Buddhists. As shudras, they had never been permitted to take part in the Vedic rituals and probably regarded them as alien and oppressive. The independent, egalitarian spirit of these unorthodox sects, on the other hand, would have been highly congenial. But Chandragupta realized that Jainism was incompatible with royal rule, and Ashoka did not become even a lay Buddhist until the end of his reign. Yet alongside Mahavira and the Buddha, Ashoka would become the most central political and cultural figure of ancient India.
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On his accession, he took the title Devanampiya, “Beloved of the Gods,” and continued to expand the empire, which now extended from Bengal to
Afghanistan. In the early years of his reign, Ashoka had lived a somewhat dissolute life and acquired a reputation for cruelty. But that
changed in about 260, when he accompanied the imperial army to put down a rebellion in
Kalinga in modern
Odisha and had an extraordinary conversion experience. During the campaign, 100,000 Kalingan soldiers were killed in battle, many times more had perished from wounds and disease afterward, and 150,000 were deported to the peripheral territories.
Ashoka was profoundly shocked by the suffering he witnessed. He had what we might call a “
Gilgamesh moment,” when the sensory realities of warfare broke through the carapace of cultivated heartlessness that makes warfare possible. He recorded his remorse in an edict inscribed on a massive rock face. Instead of jubilantly listing the numbers of enemy casualties, like most kings, Ashoka confessed that “the slaughter, death and deportation is extremely grievous to Devanampiya and weighs heavily on his mind.”
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He warned other kings that military conquest, the glory of victory, and the trappings of royalty were fleeting. If they had to dispatch an army, they should fight as humanely as possible and enforce their victory “with patience and light punishment.”
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The only true conquest was personal submission to what Ashoka called
dhamma:
a moral code of compassion, mercy, honesty, and consideration for all living creatures.

Ashoka inscribed similar edicts outlining his new policy of military restraint and moral reform on cliff faces and colossal cylindrical pillars throughout the length and breadth of his empire.
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These edicts were intensely personal messages but could also have been an attempt to give the far-flung empire ideological unity; they may have even been read aloud to the populace on state occasions. Ashoka urged his people to curb their greed and extravagance; promised that, as far as possible, he would refrain from using martial force; preached kindness to animals; and vowed to replace the violent sport of hunting, the traditional pastime of kings, with royal pilgrimages to Buddhist shrines. He also announced that he had dug wells, founded hospitals and rest houses, and planted banyan trees “which will give shade to beasts and men.”
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He insisted on the importance of respect for teachers, obedience to parents, consideration for slaves and servants, and reverence for all sects—for the orthodox
Brahmins as well as for Buddhists, Jains, and other “
heretical” schools. “Concord is to be commended,” he declared, “so that men may hear one another’s principles.”
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It is unlikely that Ashoka’s dhamma was Buddhist. This was a broader ethic, an attempt to find a benevolent model of governance based on the
recognition of human dignity, a sentiment shared by many contemporary
Indian schools. In Ashoka’s inscriptions, we hear the perennial voice of those repelled by killing and cruelty who have, throughout history, tried to resist the call to violence. But even though he preached “abstention from killing living beings,”
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he had tacitly to acknowledge that, as emperor and for the sake of the region’s stability, he could not renounce force; nor in these times could he abolish capital punishment or legislate against the killing and eating of animals (although he listed species that should be protected). Moreover, despite his distress about the plight of the Kalingans who had been deported after the battle, there was no question of repatriating them since they were essential to the imperial economy. And as head of state, he could certainly not abjure warfare or disband his army. He realized that even if he abdicated and became a Buddhist
monk, others would fight to succeed him and unleash more havoc, and as always, the peasants and the poor would suffer most.

Ashoka’s dilemma is the dilemma of civilization itself. As society developed and weaponry became more deadly, the empire, founded on and maintained by violence, would paradoxically become the most effective means of keeping the peace. Despite its violence and exploitation, people looked for an
absolute imperial monarchy as eagerly as we search for signs of a flourishing democracy today.

Ashoka’s dilemma may lie behind the story of the
Mahabharata,
India’s great epic. This massive work—eight times the length of
Homer’s
Iliad
and
Odyssey
combined—is an anthology of many strands of tradition transmitted orally from about 300 BCE but not committed to writing until the early Common Era. The
Mahabharata
is more than a narrative poem, however. It remains the Indian national saga and is the most popular of all India’s sacred texts, familiar in every home. It contains the
Bhagavad-Gita,
which has been called India’s “national gospel.”
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In the twentieth century, during the buildup to independence, the
Gita
would play a central role in the discussions about the legitimacy of waging war against
Britain.
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Its influence in forming attitudes toward violence and its relation to religion has therefore been unparalleled in India. Long after Ashoka was forgotten, it compelled people of all ranks to grapple with his dilemma, which thus became central to the collective memory of India.

Even though the text was finally redacted by
Brahmins, at its heart the epic depicts the pathos of the
Kshatriya who could not achieve enlightenment because he was obliged by the dharma of his class to be a man of war. The story is set in the
Kuru-
Panchala region before the rise of the large sixth-century kingdoms.
Yudishthira, eldest son of King Pandu, has lost his kingdom to his cousins, the
Kauravas, who rigged the ritual game of dice during his consecration, so that he, his four brothers, and Draupadi, their common wife, had to go into exile. Twelve years later the
Pandavas regain the throne in a catastrophic war in which nearly everyone on both sides is killed. The final battle brings the
Heroic Age of history to an end and ushers in what the epic calls the
Kali Yuga—our own deeply flawed era. It should have been a simple war of good versus evil. The Pandava brothers were all fathered by gods: Yudishthira by Dharma, guardian of cosmic order;
Bhīma by
Vayu, god of physical force;
Arjuna by
Indra; and the twins
Nakula and
Sahadeva by the
Ashvins, patrons of fertility and productivity. The Kauravas, however, are incarnations of the asuras, and their struggle therefore replicates on earth the war between devas and asuras in heaven. But even though the Pandavas, with the help of their cousin Krishna, chieftain of the Yadava clan, finally defeat the Kauravas, they have to resort to dubious tactics, and when they contemplate the devastated world at the end of the war, their victory seems tainted. The Kauravas, on the other hand, although they are fighting on the “wrong” side, often act in an exemplary manner. When their leader,
Duryodhana, is killed, devas sing his praises and cover his body with a shower of petals.

The
Mahabharata
is not an antiwar epic: innumerable passages glorify warfare and describe battles enthusiastically and in gory detail. Even though it is set in an earlier time, the epic probably reflects the period after Ashoka’s death in 232 BCE, when the
Mauryan Empire began its decline and India entered a dark age of political instability that lasted until the rise of the Gupta dynasty in 320 CE.
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There is, therefore, an implicit assumption that empire—or in the poem’s terms, “world rule”—is essential to peace. And while the poem is unsparing about the ferocity of empire, it poignantly recognizes that
nonviolence in a violent world is not only impossible but can actually cause
himsa
(“harm”). Brahmin law insisted that the king’s chief duty was to prevent the fearful chaos that would ensue if monarchical authority failed, and for this, military coercion (
danda
) was indispensable.
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Yet while Yudishthira is
divinely destined to be king, he hates war. He explains to
Krishna that even though he knows that it is his duty to regain the throne, warfare brings only misery. True, the
Kauravas usurped his kingdom, but to kill his cousins and friends—many of them good and noble men—would be “a most evil thing.”
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He knows that every
Vedic class has its particular duty—“The shudra obeys, the vaishya lives by
trade.… The
Brahmin prefers the begging bowl”—but the
Kshatriyas “live off killing,” and “any other way of life is forbidden to us.” The Kshatriya is therefore doomed to misery. If defeated, he will be reviled, but if he achieves victory by ruthless methods, he incurs the taint of the warrior, is “deprived of glory and reaps eternal infamy.” “For heroism is a powerful disease that eats up the heart, and peace is found only by giving it up or by serenity of mind,” Yudishthira tells Krishna. “On the other hand if final tranquillity were ignited by the total eradication of the enemy that would be even crueler.”
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