Interview: Irwin Allan Sealy, Author, Asoca: A Sutra
The author of The Trotter-Nama, The Everest Hotel and The Brainfever Bird is back with a historical novel woven around the life of Mauryan emperor Ashoka, who is best remembered for his change of heart on the battlefield in Kalinga. Confronting the suffering caused by war made him embrace Buddhism and take a vow of ahimsa in the third century BCE
How did the process of writing Asoca: A Sutra transform you? Writing a historical novel issues you a kind of visa to that distant country, the past. I came to inhabit that country for long periods of time. I had already lived in medieval India with my last book on Akbar. This time, the land I visited was vastly different. Compared with the beautifully preserved ruins at Fatehpur Sikri, there’s less on the ground from the ancient period. You’re obliged to imagine a lot more, to dig down. I was always a closet archaeologist and this book allowed me to indulge that urge. The levels of your personal past live in you and determine your present; in the same way the recovery of vanished histories transforms your view of the world.
What made you add the word ‘sutra’ to the title of your novel? Are you inviting readers to think of Ashoka as more than an emperor, perhaps a spiritual teacher, whose life is his message? Are you paying homage to religious sources in Pali and Sanskrit that tell us about him? A sutra is not necessarily a sacred text; it’s simply a gathering of sentences on a given subject in any field of human knowledge. It’s true that in some traditions sutras are religious, but in others they’re simply manuals for teaching some art or other, it could be medicine or cookery or grammar or any discipline whatsoever. For me the literal and metaphoric meaning of sutra, thread, was the main concern: the thread denotes the kind of telling involved -- a single strand of narrative. In other books I’ve used multiple strands or other discontinuous modes; in Asoca the story is spun out in one long yarn. There is a kind of homage involved, to the long tradition of memorizing facts that was developed in Pali and Sanskrit and in every oral tradition. In this sutra, the art is biography, telling the life story of a royal teacher. Here is that rare creature: the emperor as didact, a man embodied in his edicts. His life, as you say, is his message.
Could you share the thought process and symbolism behind the cover illustration and design? What aspects of your protagonist did you want to highlight?We don’t, of course, have any image of this king -- unlike those statues of Roman emperors that were said to be good likenesses -- so he’s simply shown in silhouette on our cover: the props have to do the representing. The background of Brahmi letters, a script that was for a long time a mystery, is a clear reference to his edicts. Below, you see some flames that allude to an old tradition of a violent king -- whose jail was called ‘Hell’ -- before he turned over a new leaf. And you have a crocodile lodged at the back of his head -- quite coincidentally the reptilian part of the brain -- which simply refers to a boyhood escapade by the river that got him a nickname.
Which books did you read to understand the historical context in which Ashoka lived, and to imagine Pataliputra, Ujjain, Taxila, Bodh Gaya, and Kalinga in his times? During the century-and-a-half that we’ve known this king, historians have assembled quite a detailed picture of both the man and the period from investigations into the rock edicts, contemporary scriptures, and other surviving physical evidence, whether stupas or artefacts. I’ve been fortunate to visit only one of the places you mention. Thanks to old photos I was able to travel to the sites of other excavations. Scholars teach us how to read these remnants. Fiction doesn’t try to usurp that function: its domain is the interior life.
As a novelist constructing a literary Asoca, how did you approach the contested historical details surrounding Ashoka’s life? In what way did those contestations feed your imagination? I’m not qualified to challenge the contestants either way, pro or con, and internet warfare is not my line. It strikes me that we’re all riding our hobby horses. My book is simply another contestation. The imaginative feed was outside the book: you begin to see that Mauryan world from multiple perspectives, in the round as it were. The effect is electrifying, a bit like those special virtual reality glasses, suddenly you’re seeing in three dimensions, as a contemporary might have.
Were you more open to the legends that have grown around this historical figure because you are not constrained by the disciplinary compulsions that a historian would have to worry about? Did that inspire you to spin some legends of your own? A novelist has carte blanche; but he has his constraints as much as the historian. My Asoca ends in exile in “the land of jade and fragrant rice” that borders China. Call it Burma. There are excellent reasons why such an end is possible; it doesn’t strain historical credibility. At the same time, you’re taking a liberty; you’re constantly taking liberties. Your primary liberty is the fictional universe you’ve set in motion; within that gravitational field your legends must cohere and persuade, if not convince. The truths of fiction should not be underrated, any more than the “facts” of history (or science) should be overrated. Writers are often considered shiftless Brahmins who depend on Sudra purveyors — historians? — for their facts; in my upside down Dalit view, they’re lowly image-makers who run the world.
Which places related to Ashoka’s life have you travelled to? Could you please share some memorable experiences you had there?When I was a little boy, my parents took me to the deer park at Sarnath where the Buddha preached his first sermon. I didn’t know it but Ashoka was there. (A mural done there by a more recent pilgrim was also my first encounter with Japanese painting. Such things stay with you all your life.) At Kalinga, I followed a lane below the rock and came upon fragments of crude ancient pottery I value more than porcelain. On the hill at Sanchi, where the great stupa was built by Ashoka, you stand very close to heaven. Despite the crush of tourists I experienced an emptiness I can only describe as ineffable.
Would it be accurate to say that the spread of dhamma/Buddhism in the regions we now call South Asia and South East Asia was primarily due to the efforts of Buddhist missionaries sent by Ashoka? Do you think that his role has been exaggerated?I think the best proof that Ashoka was the impetus behind the spread of Buddhism in these areas is the fact that his name is remembered there to this day.
How did you develop the characters of Sanghamitta and Ananta, who — in your novel — seem central to Asoca’s appreciation of Shakyamuni Buddha and his teachings? Sanghamitta has a historical basis, whereas Ananta came out of thin air. There is a firm tradition that Ashoka’s son and daughter carried the Buddha’s teachings and a root of the bodhi tree to Sri Lanka; I find this story touching and entirely credible. Sanghamitta the dominant, Mahinda the diffident -- that’s pure fiction. Ananta the blinded, who sees and shows the way, is a monk and a good vehicle for expounding the basics tenets of Buddhism. In the story he’s also Asoca’s jailer and by that circumstance a useful link with another forceful young woman, the aged emperor’s paramour, Tissarakha.
Did the process of building your own pagoda and writing about it in The Small Wild Goose Pagoda (2014) help you feel an affinity with Ashoka who is known for building stupas?My pagoda is a modernist version of the form as it developed in the Far East. (Pagodas there have an odd number of tiers; mine has three.) I will say that the traditional stupa is a powerful image for me, more powerful than a temple or church or any other place of worship that can be entered. A stupa has a treasure at its centre, and you cannot enter there.
Asoca: A Sutra begins with an epigraph from the 12th rock edict that states, “Watch your tongue. Glorify your own faith and you do it harm. Praise other faiths, don’t slight them. Mix with others, learn from them. This way you honour your own faith and benefit every other.” This sounds quite relevant even today. Who was Ashoka speaking to among his contemporaries?The rock edicts number 14 altogether; this is the 12th. Ashoka was aware of the tensions inherent in any kingdom where a number of faiths coexist. As a good king he had to preach tolerance: in fact, he promulgates it. As Buddhism was the state religion, he needed to safeguard the rights of what we would call minorities — the Hindus of the day.
Ashoka also makes an appearance in your book Zelaldinus: A Masque (2017), where Emperor Akbar reprimands Emperor Ashoka by saying, “Ashoka the great? Don’t make Me laugh./ graffiti artist. planted six trees by/ the roadside. Dug a water tank or two, and said love/ one another. or was that the other guy?” Is your new novel Asoca: A Sutra an extension of that conversation? In Zelaldinus, “Ashoka” is a comic poem, just four lines long, where Akbar the Great derides the competition. Since Akbar already means great, to be called “Akbar the Great” is to be great twice over: he loves that. Ashoka, he reckons, is a “Graffiti artist!” The sting in the tail is that “the other guy,” Christ, was not the least concerned with greatness.
When you look back at both these books, what do you think constitutes greatness? To what extent did Akbar and Ashoka participate in creating this narrative of greatness about themselves?I would say not at all. Petty dictators and tinpot generals — second-rate actors — are concerned to have their names up in lights. Those with a calling work from an inner impulse, without the least concern for their reputations. Alexander is too busy marching to contemplate his image in a shield. Your greatness creeps up on you; it happens behind your back, after you’re gone.
Which episode from Ashoka’s life was most moving for you to write? Possibly the moment when Ashoka’s first wife, the mother of Mahinda and Sanghamitta, tells him she will not be part of his grand bid for kingship. Hers is a truly independent mind and eventually she becomes a nun.
The story of Ashoka is often told as a parable about atonement for past wrongdoing and commitment to an ethical life. In that respect, he reminds me of Angulimala, who was also transformed by the teachings of the Buddha. Have you thought of these two in connection with each other? When a story is condensed into a sort of takeaway, perhaps ahimsa is what comes to mind. What else do you hope for contemporary readers to take from these stories? Truth to tell I didn’t make the connection with Angulimala. But the sensational metamorphosis described in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, where the evil Chandashoka turns into a pious king upon his conversion to Buddhism, is a little hard to swallow. Ashoka’s change of heart at Kalinga is more credible. Ahimsa is certainly a valuable lesson to learn from this king, but in this complicated world non-violence is at best an ideal; tolerance is probably a more compact and portable virtue.
Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, educator and researcher. He is @chintan_connect on Twitter.