WI: Ashoka doesn't convert to Buddhism

Alkahest

Banned
Here's an interesting POD that I've been meaning to develop into a proper TL Once I Get The Time And Can Be Arsed for some time now, and I thought I would share it with you.

As the title says, what if Ashoka never underwent his famous conversion to Buddhism? What would be the effects on Buddhism as a religion and on the fate of the Maurya Empire?
 
Most notable change is that Buddhism very marginal religion and not expand nearly whole Asia. Probably Asia is religiously more divided than OTL.
 
I don't know- Buddhism managed to spread outside India not through Ashoka's efforts but through trade and evangelisation. Ashoka gave it massive political legitimacy which helped its spread, yes, but it was already propagating across India and Asia.

However, I think the greatest effect will be on Hinduism- in order to make the resurgence it did, Hinduism reformed hugely and incorporated a lot of Buddhist ideas. Vedic Hinduism was quite different to modern Hinduism and if Buddhism is not as dominant ITTL, Hinduism will likewise be altered.
 
There is a sort of Indian folk belief that converting made him less militaristic and it changed India's culture to being less militaristic hence weaker.

So if this is true then maybe if he didn't convert India would be stronger in the long term. Maybe it would be able to repel the Muslims better.
 
Had it not been for his conversion to Buddhism,Samrat Ashoka wouldn't have abandoned his policy of war and conquest. After his conquest of Kalinga his next goal would have been the Southern kingdoms of Chola, Pandya, Keralaputra and Satyaputra. Conquering those southern neighbors he would have extended the boundary to the southern tip. Then he might also have crossed the strait to extend his rule to the Island of Lanka. But his name would have remained just another name among those of thousands of Kings and emperors. It wouldn't have shone like a lone Sun among the myriad stars in the sky.
 
There is a sort of Indian folk belief that converting made him less militaristic and it changed India's culture to being less militaristic hence weaker.

So if this is true then maybe if he didn't convert India would be stronger in the long term. Maybe it would be able to repel the Muslims better.

Things don't work that way.

Christianism is against violence in theory, yet look at Europe's past.

Heck, Japan had quasi crusadeish warrior monks warfare.
 
There is a sort of Indian folk belief that converting made him less militaristic and it changed India's culture to being less militaristic hence weaker.

So if this is true then maybe if he didn't convert India would be stronger in the long term. Maybe it would be able to repel the Muslims better.

That's not even close to true. Let alone a POD this far back butterflies away Islam, Christianity, and possibly Zoroastrianism depending on when that became the religion of Persia.
 
Things don't work that way.

Christianism is against violence in theory, yet look at Europe's past.

Heck, Japan had quasi crusadeish warrior monks warfare.

They can work on an individual scale though, his conversion may have made him less violent, although long term decrease in violence I'm less certain of.
 
They can work on an individual scale though, his conversion may have made him less violent, although long term decrease in violence I'm less certain of.

Beside, subtility - it's not clear if he actually converted to Buddhism I heard, kinda like Constantine for Christianism. He may have patronised it - AND other religions possibly, but not converted or late.

And like Constatine, cynically, it's possible there was a realpolitik event there - he used Buddhism in a nation, cultural builsding effort perhaps, weaving a legend around him... like to clean his bloody conqueror past.

Maybe Flocculencio could say more there, of one member here.
 
I wrote this post on this thread last November. The bolded portion mentions one possible major impact of Ashoka not adopting Buddhism:

I had mentioned Carvaka several posts ago. Dating from around the time of the founding of Buddhism and Jainism, it already held many of the tenets of an atheistic religion:

1. All attributes that represent a person are contained in their physical body. Therefore, there is no soul independent of the body, or any afterlife. There is no heaven, hell, or reincarnation.

2. There are no supernatural causes for natural phenomena, everything has a natural cause. Therefore there are no gods or supernatural entities.

3. There is nothing wrong with pleasure derived from the senses. Austerities accomplish little or nothing.

4. The Vedas (foundations of Vedic religion) were created by men and have no inherent authority. Rituals based on them also accomplish nothing.

5. In general, truth, integrity, consistency, and freedom of thought are held as the highest philosophical virtues.

This is about all that is known of the Carvaka tenets, almost all of their writings have been lost. The remaining writings consist of about 60 verses known as the Barhaspatya sutras, with an unknown number of additional verses possibly still extant but uncollected.

From the same time is the Ajivika school. Followers of this philosophy were strict determinists, and most followers were non-theistic or atheistic. They held that time was an illusion, since all events -- past, present and future -- were already fixed.

This school was actually quite popular for a time, rivaling Buddhism and Jainism, until Ashoka ordered the execution of all Ajivikas in territories ruled by him. (He evidently regarded Ajivika as a serious threat to Buddhism, and decided that it needed to be destroyed.) As with the Carvaki school, almost all their writings have been lost.

It is commonly accepted that both of these schools appeared at the same time as, or slightly before, Buddhism and Jainism, since both religions appear to have incorporated a number of ideas from them.

This would also make them somewhat earlier than similar Greek philosophies. I would not be surprised to learn that there was a flow of ideas from India to the Greek-speaking lands at that time. Could the Greek development of rationalism in general have been inspired by the Indian schools?

If Ashoka had not suppressed the Ajivika school, it might have survived to the present day, possibly merging with the Carvaka school to form an early materialist scepticism. In fact we could possibly have seen an early flowering of the scientific method, at about the same time as the Hellenistic version -- and this version might have survived!

edit -- Actually, most of the pieces of a full-fledged scientific revolution were already in place at that time, from philosophy (discussed above) to mathematics, for example Panini (520-460 BCE) who developed Boolean logic and the foundations of programming language, Pingala (3rd century BCE) who studied combinatorics, binomial coefficients and Fibonacci numbers, and Katyayana (3rd century BCE) who produced results in geometry. I am now curious why a scientific revolution did NOT develop in India at the same time as in Greece, unless one did happen but has been since forgotten.
 
Religions don't stop always sciences, it's an old cannard kinda.

India by example did much for the history of maths, as well as stuff as Astronomy perhaps. As you pointed.
 
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I wrote this post on this thread last November. The bolded portion mentions one possible major impact of Ashoka not adopting Buddhism:

As the Ubbergeek points out, maths was huge in India- calculus was independently invented there, for one thing, though long after this time period. But yes, Ashoka not suppressing other philosophical schools means that the pre-Buddhism diversity is preserved
 
As the Ubbergeek points out, maths was huge in India- calculus was independently invented there, for one thing, though long after this time period. But yes, Ashoka not suppressing other philosophical schools means that the pre-Buddhism diversity is preserved

Again, I believe I heard Ashoka actually patroned-protected or least tolerated not just Buddhism but other 'spiritual paths' and perhaps philosophies.. Maybe some of them just died out on their own.
 
The Wikipedia article on Ajivika says this:

According to the 2nd century CE text Ashokavadana, the Mauryan emperor Bindusara and his chief queen Subhadrângî, were a believer of this philosophy, that reached its peak of popularity during the same time, and then declined into obscurity. Ashokavadana also mentions that after his conversion to Buddhism, Bindusara's son Ashoka issued an order to kill all the Ajivikas in Pundravardhana, enraged at a picture that depicted Gautama Buddha in negative light. Around 18,000 followers of the Ajivika sect were executed as a result of this order.
 
Had it not been for his conversion to Buddhism,Samrat Ashoka wouldn't have abandoned his policy of war and conquest. After his conquest of Kalinga his next goal would have been the Southern kingdoms of Chola, Pandya, Keralaputra and Satyaputra. Conquering those southern neighbors he would have extended the boundary to the southern tip. Then he might also have crossed the strait to extend his rule to the Island of Lanka. But his name would have remained just another name among those of thousands of Kings and emperors. It wouldn't have shone like a lone Sun among the myriad stars in the sky.
Agreed: He may have become successful in life but after his empire fell it would have been "just another large empire".
 
If I may, then I believe there are certain facts to consider.

Firstly, while he swore never to take another life, Ashoka never demobbed so much as a single soldier. So... Any decrease in military strength wasn't quite his fault.

Secondly, as has been said above, he would have unified what is 'Modern' India, in addition to the territory that's gone now, of course.

His future efforts showed him a highly.capable administrator. So, assuming his ruthlessness remains intact, quite possibly he could have taken ultra-harsh measures, like extinguish every previous royal or noble family, toss anyone who'd make trouble in his personal torture chamber, suppress any fledgeling rebellions, things like that.

So... Quite possibly, a unified India would have persisted long enough for future rulers to see it as a good thing.

And THAT, could very well lead to an India dominating Asia.









Of course, that's just one opinion. It could've crashed and burned epically:D:D
 
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