Emperor Asoka ruled much of South Asia and played a crucial role in the spread of Buddhism in the 3rd century BC. But who was the man? What brought about his transformation from a warmonger to a practitioner and preacher of peace? Irwin Allan Sealy’s latest novel Asoca: A Sutra— an imagined memoir told in the voice of the ageing emperor, ‘Asoca’, after he has abdicated and retired to a cave— might provide some answers.
What drew you to write a book on Asoka?
A glimpse—quite late in life—of his famous Kalsi edict rock located in the very district where I’d spent a goodly portion of my life, Dehradun. The rock was pivotal in establishing an accurate chronology for our ancient history and in the deciphering of our archaic languages, so I was a little ashamed of having failed to visit this crucial landmark in my own backyard. I think the novel was part expiation.
In Zelaldinus (2017), the narrator was your alter-ego. Here, Asoka is looking back on his life as a 70-something man. Did your being close to him in age have any bearing on his reflections?
Certainly, it helped to be able to look back as Asoka himself might have towards the end of his life. I’d like to think that proximity—reflecting on life from a comparable vantage—gave the firstperson narrative some authenticity. We don’t know for sure when Asoka was born or when he died, so his age is conjectural. Historians think he lived into his mid-seventies.
You said in an interview that the sorrow of Asoka resonated with your own experiences as a person. Can you elaborate?
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