Ashoka: Power Written in Stone
100 Lives That Shaped the World · Episode 9
- Historical Biographies
- 40 min
- Ages 12–99
- 10 chapters
About this audiobook
A biography of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka through his rock and pillar edicts, the conquest of Kalinga, dhamma policy, Buddhist patronage, imperial administration, and later traditions.
Why it's worth a listen
It asks what a ruler's public remorse can reveal—and conceal—when moral language, welfare measures, coercive power, inscriptions, and later legend coexist.
A question to keep
How did Ashoka try to turn conquest into moral government, and how far can his own inscriptions prove that transformation?
Chapters
- Remorse Cut into Rock
- The Empire Ashoka Inherited
- A Prince Hidden by Later Stories
- Kalinga and the Language of Regret
- What Dhamma Asked of People
- An Empire Addressed in Many Voices
- Welfare Inside a Coercive State
- Ashoka and the Buddhist Community
- After the Emperor
- Reading the Stones Again