page_title: Ashoka
section_title: Rebellion at Takshashila
hierarchical_section_title: Ashoka / As a prince / Rebellion at Takshashila
caption_attribution_description: English: Aramaic inscription from Taxila JRAS
context_page_description: Ashoka, also known as Ashoka the Great, was an Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty, who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from c. 268 to 232 BCE. The grandson of the founder of the Maurya Dynasty, Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka promoted the spread of Buddhism across ancient Asia. Considered by many to be one of India's greatest emperors, Ashoka expanded Chandragupta's empire to reign over a realm stretching from present-day Afghanistan in the west to Bangladesh in the east. It covered the entire Indian subcontinent except for parts of present-day Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. The empire's capital was Pataliputra, with provincial capitals at Taxila and Ujjain.
  Ashoka waged a destructive war against the state of Kalinga, which he conquered in about 260 BCE. He converted to Buddhism after witnessing the mass deaths of the Kalinga War, which he had waged out of a desire for conquest and which reportedly directly resulted in more than 100,000 deaths and 150,000 deportations.
context_section_description: According to the Ashokavadana, Bindusara dispatched prince Ashoka to suppress a rebellion in the city of Takshashila (present-day Bhir Mound). This episode is not mentioned in the Sri Lankan tradition, which instead states that Bindusara sent Ashoka to govern Ujjain. Two other Buddhist texts – Ashoka-sutra and Kunala-sutra – state that Bindusara appointed Ashoka as a viceroy in Gandhara (where Takshashila was located), not Ujjain.
  The Ashokavadana states that Bindusara provided Ashoka with a fourfold-army (comprising cavalry, elephants, chariots and infantry), but refused to provide any weapons for this army. Ashoka declared that weapons would appear before him if he was worthy of being a king, and then, the deities emerged from the earth, and provided weapons to the army. When Ashoka reached Takshashila, the citizens welcomed him, and told him that their rebellion was only against the evil ministers, not the king. Sometime later, Ashoka was similarly welcomed in the Khasa territory, and the gods declared that he would go on to conquer the whole earth.
  Takshashila was a prosperous and geopolitically important city, and historical evidence proves that by Ashoka's time, it was well-connected to the Mauryan capital Pataliputra by the Uttarapatha trade route. However, no extant contemporary source mentions the Takshashila rebellion, and none of Ashoka's own records state that he ever visited the city. That said, the historicity of the legend about Ashoka's involvement in the Takshashila rebellion maybe corroborated by an Aramaic-language inscription discovered at Sirkap near Taxila. The inscription includes a name that begins with the letters "prydr", and most scholars restore it as "Priyadarshi", which was a title of Ashoka. Another evidence of Ashoka's connection to the city may be the name of the Dharmarajika Stupa near Taxila; the name suggests that it was built by Ashoka ("Dharma-raja").
  The story about the deities miraculously bringing weapons to Ashoka may be the text's way of deifying Ashoka; or of indicating that Bindusara – who disliked Ashoka – wanted him to fail in Takshashila.
caption: The Aramaic Inscription of Taxila probably mentions Ashoka.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "501", "Image ImageLength": "1072", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "PaintShop Pro 20,00", "Image InterColorProfile": "[]", "Image ExifOffset": "110", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "3434", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5222", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "501", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1072"}