Rediscovering Ashoka the Great, the outsider king

Irwin Allan Sealy’s Asoca tells the story of an emperor from the subcontinent in third century BCE, a man we know as Ashoka the Great. Adding to our closeness to Asoca is the first-person narrative supported by Sealy’s carefully constructed prose—for the most part, it is deceptively flat, calling no attention to itself with either flourish or rhetoric. A shraman throws away the rule book; a brahman is the rule book.” Asoca settles in to his new role as king and initiates administrative reforms. Which I did, or began to do.” Convinced that the principles for living an ethical life must exist within society as much as they do outside it, Asoca decides dhamma, the code of good conduct the Buddha articulated for his followers, will guide all his choices henceforth, that he will rule by conscience over all else.