Ashoka's Life for SS
Storyboard Text
- Ashoka was born as the third ruler of the Mauryan Empire and the grandson of its founder. Ashoka became emperor about 265 BCE he decided to use violence and force as being the ruler.
- Ashoka took over many of India's kingdoms and he spread death penalties for even minor crimes that people did.
- The Kingdom of Kalinga was the last part of India to resist Ashoka’s control. It lay along the Ganges, south of Ashoka’s territory. In the mid-200s BCE, Ashoka led his army against Kalinga. The Mauryans won, and hundreds of thousands of Kalingans were massacred or sold into slavery.
- He saw the amount of death and harm that he was causing and relized how bad it was. He once saw a Buddhist monk meditating in a street amid the chaos and destruction and inquired how such a man, who had nothing, could appear so happy.
- soon after running into the Buddhist Monk, he decided he would be a part of the Buddhist community. Which meant he gave up everything he knew about violence and became a peaceful and nonviolent person. Ashoka became a believer in and practitioner of Ahimsa.
- After his conversion, Ashoka encouraged his subjects to become followers of Buddhism, but he allowed religious freedom to all people in his empire. He had several temples built throughout India. He also established laws that followed Buddhist principles and had them inscribed on rocks and pillars throughout his empire.
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