Searching for Ashoka

Nayanjot Lahiri's 'Searching for Ashoka' unravels the various avatars of India's most famous emperor, revealing how he came to be remembered and forgotten in distinctive ways.

Through personal journeys across India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand, Lahiri explores how Ashoka's visibility from antiquity to the modern era has been accompanied by a reinvention of his persona.

The historical Ashoka spoke expansively of his ideas of governance and a new kind of morality, but his afterlife is a jumble of stories and representations within various Buddhist imaginings.

By remembering Ashoka selectively, Lahiri argues that ancient kings and chroniclers created an artifice, constantly appropriating and then remolding history to suit their own social visions, political agendas, and moral purposes.