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BUDDHISM
proached the ideal of the world-ruling Cakravartin.1 His domain comprised the greater part of India proper, as well as Afghanistan south of the Hindu Kush, Baluchistan, Sind, the valley of Kashmir, Ncpal, and the lower Himalaya. Roads were maintained throughout, with inns and protected wells at regular intervals. One reads also of fruit gardens and planted avenues, public granaries, medical aid sor animals as well as human beings, special officers to prevent wrongful imprisonment and punishment, to help parents with large families, and to give attention to the aged, courts of justice open to all, and the zeal of the Emperor himself to attend at all times and in all places to the people's business, "whether I am dining or in the ladics' apartments, or in my bedroom or in my closet, or in my carriage or in the palace gardens." 32 Numerous edicts addressed to the populace incul. cated devotion, parental and filial love, charity, purity of thought, self-control, generosity to friends, acquaintances, and relatives, and to the Brāhmans as well as to Buddhist monks and nuns. Regulations were instituted for the protection of animals and birds: forests were not to be burnt, not even chaff "containing living things." No animal food was served at the imperial table; and the king himself, even while governing the greatest empire of his time anywhere in the world, assumed and faithfully practiced the vows of a monk.88
Asoka's most important mission was the one that carried the Buddhist teaching to the large southern island-kingdom of Ceylon. The proselytizing party was headed by Mahendra, the King's younger brother (son, according to another version), who was followed presently by the princess-nun Sanghamittā, the King's daughter, who bore with her a branch of the Sacred Bo Tree, which, being planted, grew, and is growing to this day in Anurādhapura.
81 Cf. supra, pp. 127-135. 82 Rock Edict VI; Smith, op. cit., p. 12. 88 Cf. Havell, op. cit., pp. 89-103, and Smith, op. cit., throughout.
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