Ashoka · Politics
Ashoka’s Twelfth Rock Edict and its startlingly modern pluralism: honour all sects, never exalt your own faith by disparaging another, and understand that whoever attacks other sects out of devotion to his own does his own sect the gravest harm. The goal is <em>samavaya</em> - concord.
You learned that in the Twelfth Rock Edict Ashoka honoured all sects, condemned praising one’s own by disparaging others, held that the sectarian who attacks other faiths harms his own, and set concord (samavaya) as the goal. Explain his argument for toleration and why it was so far ahead of its time.
Leads to Cyrus the Great.
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