Asoka In History and Historical Memory

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Asoka In History and Historical Memory
By: Patrick Olivelle

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Author: Patrick Olivelle
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9788120834026
Publication Date: 2009

Product Code: 16910

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About the author

The current volume which contains the presentations at a symposium [sponsored by the South Asia Institute and the Department of Asian Studies of the University of Texts at Austin (February 4, 2006)] advances the study of Asoka both as history and historical memory. The authors of these papers take as historically significant not only the "historical truth" of Asoka but also the ways in which he presents himself and his policies to his subjects and the ways in which he is remembered and used for political, nationalistic, and religious purposes by succeeding generations both in India and in other parts of Asia, especially within the expanding Buddhist communities and nations. This volume in reassessing the Asokan inscriptions themselves analyses in detail the actual process that mediated Asoka's messages and commands and the actual carving of rocks and pillars across the subcontinent; studies the history of the crucial term devanampriya, both in the pre-Asokan Vedic literature and in the grammatical and other literature post-dating Asoka; evaluates the significance of the Asokan edicts, the first inscriptions in the Indian subcontinent, with respect to the epigraphic habit in India during the succeeding centuries. This study re-examines the artistic remains from the Asokan period; highlights some unique features of Asoka's activities, both epigraphic and artistic. It shows the pitfalls of merely looking at foreign influences on Asokan artistic production. It also looks for evidence of Asokan memory in the Greek classical accounts of the Hellenistic period.

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