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BUDDHISM
records, Upagupta pointed to the Buddha's birthplace, saying, 'Here, Great King, the Venerable One was born. Ilere was the first memorial consecrated to the Enlightened Onc; and here, immediately after His birth, the Holy One took seven steps upon the ground.' Aśoka then did reverence to the holy place, ordered an imperial standard to be set up there, distributed largesse of gold, and made the village free of state taxes for ever. Kapilavastu, the scene of the great Renunciation, was the next place visited, then the Bo Tree at Gayā under which the Sākya Prince attained Nirvāņa. There Aśoka built a shrine, probably similar to the one which now exists at the place, and lavished alms upon the crowds of mendicants-a hundred thousand gold pieces, so the story goes. Then the great procession passed on to Sarnāth, the Deer Park or sacred grove in which the Buddha first proclaimed the Dharma, or 'turned the Whecl of the Law'; and next to Śrāvasti, the monastery where the Buddha lived and taught; then to Kuśināgara, where he passed away or reached the goal of Pari-Nirvāņa. At Srāvasti Asoka did reverence to the stūpas [reliquary shrines] of the Buddha's disciples. At the stūpa of Ānanda, the most devoted and beloved, he gavc, it is said, largesse of a million pieces of gold, but at that of Vakkula only a single copper coin, for Vakkula had not striven greatly in the Eightfold Path nor had he done much to help his fellow crea
tures." 27
King Aśoka is said to have supported sixty-four thousand Buddhist monks; eighty thousand stūpas are credited to him, as well as countless monasteries. He set up memorial columns throughout the empire and engraved on them didactic edicts. Missionaries were sent forth “to the utmost limits of the barbarian countries,” to “intermingle among unbelievers” both within the kingdom “and in foreign countries, teaching better things." Taking advantage of the connections with the West, which had
37 From E. B. Havell, The History of Aryan Rule in India from the Earliest Times to the Death of Akbar, New York, no date, p. 97.
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