PIYADASI -BELOVED OF THE GODS.
He was a King
like many others in human history,
Born to swim to
glory in rivers of blood, guts and gore;
Programmed to
carve an empire out of human misery,
And to sculpt
his name for posterity out of human skulls.
But, for the
third king of the Mauryas, it was not destined to be so.
For:
The Kalinga
genocide in 262 B.C made Ashoka see the river of red;
And realize with
horror, sorrow and remorse,
The grave folly,
the wastage and the terrible human suffering;
The million
agonies caused by this mindless slaughter of war;
And the empty
victory on the corpse-ridden battlefield.
And then,
through the heart rending anguish,
The Light of
Wisdom dawned on him;
And then was
born in him the True Emperor,
A King-of-Hearts,
a Creature of Compassion,
The maker of
Edicts, the pillar of Buddhism,
‘Piyadasi’,
the Beloved-of –the- Gods.
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