- Lived:
- early 4th century – c. 375 CE · a Gupta prince of Magadha, ruling from Pāṭaliputra (Patna); his armies marched to Kāñci in the far south, and his name travelled further still — to Sri Lanka, and to the Kushan courts of the north-west
- Field:
- empire — third ruler and true architect of the Gupta empire, the state under which India's "classical age" flowered; also, by his own insistent advertisement, poet and musician
- The Big Idea:
- Conquest is the easy part; holding is expensive. So he ran an empire on three settings — annex the near, defeat-and-release the far for tribute, flatter the distant — and then chose, for his gold coins, an image no conqueror had chosen before: himself, cross-legged, playing the vīṇā.
- In their words:
- "Having protected the earth, (he) wins heaven" — the legend on his aśvamedha gold coins. Everything longer that survives is in his court poet's voice; the mint is the closest we come to his own.
- If you remember one thing:
- The emperor who came nearer than anyone in six centuries to ruling all India had his wars written up — on Aśoka's own pillar — by a general-poet who signed the poem; and on his money he wanted to be remembered not on a horse but with a lute in his hands.