LOVING ANIMALS:Asoka

LOVING ANIMALS

Foreword

Love is the basis of all religions. Loving fellow beings is the essence of life. Mankind cannot help loving each other including pet animals and birds.

In a way, love for animals practices a human being to experience the joy in loving. Especially in our times, a great need has arisen to remind that fact to children and Adults.  

This collection of stories chosen from the legends of many faiths, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Jainism and Buddhism wishes to serve one purpose, Love for animals and other beings.

These stories were carefully selected and written in a very simple language. The message of love should reach the mind of the reader; it is my only intention.

Preaching fails at times, but stories remain in the younger minds forever and have a deeper impact. Many people will agree with it. 

Asoka

It was a battlefield. The war which took place there had ended just recently, the previous evening. The war was a bigger one.  

Thousands of beheaded bodies were found scattered all around. Mutilated human and horses’ heads were found here and there.

Pools of blood had wetted the entire field.

The cut off arms and legs of soldiers were found dropped like chopped wood. The moans and cries of the wounded soldiers were heard everywhere.

Civilians who came to search for their fathers, sons, brothers and husbands were crying. They shouted, cursed and wept.

The whole scene was terrific. Fear, agony, sorrow and terror got mixed with each other. No one would be able to recover their peace of mind after seeing them.

But a man on his horseback was looking all around. He glanced at each site with a certain calmness.  He was the king who had won that war. He was the emperor Asoka, who ruled the kingdom of Magadha. He wanted to know the price he had paid for his victory.

The horse he rode on walked slowly. He stopped it wherever he wanted. Every scene he saw made him guilty. He felt that he was a butcher, not an emperor.

There were wounded elephants, dead elephants lying like fallen hillocks. The dead elephants and horses found with open eyes.

The staring eyes of animals and soldiers were looking at him. all those eyes were asking him a silent question.        

“What harm did we make to you? Why have you done this?”

The same silent question continued at every step like a hammer stroke. Emperor Asoka’s mind was troubled very much. A sense of remorse thundered within him. a flash of lightning followed. It was the flash of a simple and solid truth.

‘This is not a victory. It is only a defeat. A mightier defeat. So many lives were lost to make me win. Now I am no more a winner, but only a great sinner.’ He thought.

He halted the horse at one place. Tears rolled down from his eyes. His lips trembled, hands on the reins shivered for a while.

Slowly he regained himself, by making a vow to himself. The vow was made two thousand years ago. Indeed no ruler, nor a king made such a vow from the beginning of the world until then and even till now. He repeated the vow once more within his mind.

“I won’t do any harm to the lives of mankind or animals in the name of war hereafter.”

No ruler could have done this vow after his glory. Many other kings would have felt proud of their victory and killings.

But Asoka was different. A great change of mind took place within him. he began to follow the principles of Lord Buddha. He kept up the vow until his death. He honoured all the living beings and treated them alike. He opened hospitals for the animals throughout the country. Sanctuaries for birds were built under his rule.

No ruler in any other part of the world had shown such a concern for all the living beings until then. On the twentieth year of his reign, he banned cock fights, ram fights and bullock fights. Severe punishments were given to the law-breakers. People were warned of those offences by the inscription made on stone pillars.

“Treating animals equal to human beings!’ It was quite a new idea for the people of Asoka’s time. They did not accept it so easily. But Asoka insisted it firmly. Later on, they accepted it as a law. In all the stone pillars laid by Asoka, his name was inscribed as “Priyadarshan.’ It meant that a person of loving attention. Indeed, he loved all the living beings with fond attention.