Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor

This is a thorough treatment of a patient quest by many people over two centuries to accumulate evidence proving the existence of an emperor who ruled much of India more than two thousand years ago. The real Ashoka was nearly erased from history through the systematic destruction of his works by Hindus hostile to his embrace of Buddhism. A few British officers and colonial officials identified broken monuments and inscriptions carved in stone far from urban centers and began piecing together these bits of evidence. (Today's military and diplomatic officers can only wonder at how much leave time the British were given from their jobs.) Much effort went into translating texts in poorly known ancient languages.

Along the way, we learn of Chinese and Greek travelers who saw Ashoka's Buddhist-related works, and of a surprising degree of interaction between the empires of Ashoka and Alexander the Great. Allen introduces the idea that today's untouchables are the descendants of early Buddhists who lost out to Hindu dominance.

Allen has illustrated his book with excellent drawings made by British officers and their Indian colleagues as early as 1783, and by photographs dating as far back as 1872. If only our schools and training institutions still trained us to draw this well.

Anglophiles and Indophiles might give this book five stars. I give it four only because it is a long read filled with exotic names and scholarly disputes that may blur the average reader's vision.

3.5 stars. I did not like or get as much out of this book as I had hoped. Part of that is, in retrospect, due to the subject itself -- very little really is known about Ashoka's life beyond the writings on the stupas. About his life and times, Allen doesn't offer anything new.

However, what he does do well is explain the history of the European discovery of each edict or group of edicts, usually by British archeologists or adventurers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These accounts are very detailed.

Allen also provides translations of all of the text on all of the existing stupas, and that in itself is valuable to have in one book.

I found Allen's tone a little bit snobby/snarky towards other historians and writers at times and found that a bit off-putting. I prefer a neutral tone; I respect it more and feel more confident in the author's point of view and observations.

So for me, this book was a mixed bag; best for those looking for a detailed history of the European discovery of Asoka and his edicts.

This book is an enlightening and fascinating review for the general reader of how European scholars in the 1800s became aware of the Buddhist history of India, deciphered the rock/pillar inscriptions they found in the Indian subcontinent, and came to know the historical figure of Emperor Ashoka. The writing is clear and accessible, the author's passion for the subject is evident, and there are several helpful diagrams and photographs. I would have wished for a few more maps to complement the text. The author's device of revealing to the reader only what scholars uncovered at the time is interesting but can be frustrating. At each point we first-time readers learn what was found or discovered but, lacking any further context at that point, do not know where to place it other than in an ever-lengthening jumbled list of curiosities that we quickly forget. Perhaps the author could have occasionally inserted a "here's what we know so far, and here's what's at stake" sort of paragraph.

A fascinating volume, less about Ashoka himself, about whom we know rather little, than the brilliant scholarly work of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century (mostly British) archaeologists, linguists, and historians who unearthed his story. There is a final chapter that gives us a capsule biography of the great emperor, but Allen's beautifully written book, clearly a labor of love, is more of a tribute to the energy, devotion, and genius of the researchers.

Ashoka was one those rare individuals who went from being a feared warlord to one who was embraced, even by those he conquered, following his conversion to Buddahism. For centuries Ashoka was seen as a quasi-mythical figure from India's distant past. Scholars were never quite sure how much of his life was fact or fiction. In fact, many dismissed him as entirely fiction. I had hope this book would shed some light on the man himself; his accomplishments, personality, politics, loves, military operations, and so forth. This book does do some of that. Charles Allen attempts to take the reader on a trip of discovery, from the presumed myth to the slow process of field research down through the last 100 or so years and the often difficult and confusing world academic verification. In that regard, the book accomplished its objective, albeit in a somewhat slow and in parts, dry fashion. However, in the search for the flesh and blood man that I was looking for, Allen fails. Little is revealed about the man himself. In many ways, he's still left as an historical abstract. Charles Allen has produced a well written scholarly book, but one not particuarly informative or entertaining for the amatuer historian or casual reader..

Well researched and presented in an interesting and compelling way - not your typical academic-like book. I was always curious about Ashoka, I was fully informed by this wonderful study, not only about Ashoka but the back story of how we come to learn about him in the 20 century.

The legendary figure of Ashoka is brought to life through archaelogical excavations in the last 200 years - fascinating reading

As you would expect from Powell Books, the item as delivered timely and as advertised.

This book is bursting with absorbing and well-integrated biographical vignettes of the people whose sequential archaeological and philological detective work finally pieced together the history of India's Mauryan Empire and its most illustrious emperor, Ashoka, filling a great gap in the historiography of the Subcontinent. Included are summaries of the travels of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims Faxian (fifth century) and Xuanzang (seventh century), which eventually served as guides to Buddhist sites in India and their histories. Allen demonstrates the Brahmanic efforts to obliterate documentary and physical evidence of Ashoka's Buddhist times, which is what occasioned the long delay in filling in this important era of Indian history. At the end, we have a summary of the life and reign of Ashoka as revealed by persistent archaeological and philological inquiry spanning nearly two centuries.

There is some overlap with the earlier book "India Discovered", by John Keay, but the present book is of narrower focus, elaborated on additional themes, and not at all plagiaristic; the two authors graciously acknowledge one another. A must-read book for anyone intrigued by Indian history. (Having once been privileged to view and stand atop one of the major rock inscriptions of Ashoka at Shahbaz Garhi, my own enthusiasm for this book was a given.)

A gripe: How many otherwise very good books are besmirched by inadequate indexing? A great many, in my experience. The index of this book, for example, does not include "Great Dynastic Chronicle", one of it's most important subjects! I can only conclude that publishers insist on employing incompetents at low pay to do their indexing. Absolutely maddening.