All language subtitles for The.Story.of.India.E02.The.Power.of.Ideas.720p.10bit.BluRay.x265-budgetbits

[Voices]

MICHAEL WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
In "The Story of India,"

we've reached
the Fifth Century B.C.,

the time of the ancient Greeks.

In India, this was an age
that gave birth to vast empires

and to thinkers who changed
the world from that day to this.

Like the Greeks, the Indians
were driven by great ideas,

by the search for knowledge
and truth.

But their world is still alive.

Here in the south India,
the people of the Jain religion

still pay homage to an ancient
king who renounced his kingdom

seeking enlightenment.

From the Fifth Century B.C.,

driven by great thinkers
like the founder

of the Jain religion, Mahavira,
but above all by the Buddha,

these ideas shaped one
of the most revolutionary

times in history.

The next chapter
in "The Story of India."

[Chanting]

My journey and search
of ancient India

began with one of those
all-too-common acts of terror

that scar our modern age.

Good morning.
"Times of India," please.

We humans are still
a competitive species,

fighting for power,
resources, and ideas.

Well, we're heading to
Varanasi on the river Ganges.

Tempered slightly because...

last night there was
a terrible series of bombings

in the city,
the railway station

and in one of the temples.

Nobody knows quite why
it happened,

but we think the trains
are still running,

so we'll see what happens.

There are over 6 billion people
in today's world

compared with the 100 million
in the Fifth Century B.C.

And the fulfillment
of our desires has become

a goal of civilization.

Every person has
his own identity, his own needs.

Mr. Wood...

Mr. Wood--ah, yes, here.

Indian Railways--wonderful.

All the great
ancient civilizations

meditated
on these big questions.

How to live life, sharing
the planet with other people,

how to find happiness.

For Indian people,
the traditional goal of life

is to live with virtue,
dharma;

to gain wealth and success,
artha;

to find pleasure, kama;

but in the end,
to seek enlightenment, moksha.

My journey led me first down
the plain of the river Ganges.

Here in the Fifth Century B.C.

a series of kingdoms grew up
with cities.

And in history, cities are
always vehicles for change.

The most famous was Varanasi,
India's greatest sacred city.

It's the most important center
for Hinduism,

India's majority religion.

And in Varanasi, you can find
living continuities

with ancient India,

especially the core of Hindu
religion, the caste system,

into which all Hindus are born,
marry, and die.

The caste system divides people
from birth to death.

It fixes their jobs
and their place in society,

from Brahman priest at the top

to the outcasts and untouchables
at the bottom,

who clean the waste
and dispose of the dead.

But it's a mutually
sustaining system.

Everybody has a place and
everyone needs somebody else.

We're gonna meet one of
the family of the Dom Rajas,

the lords of the dead.

They are the only people who can
perform the funeral pyres

here in Benares.

When family comes to have
cremation of family member,

the fire can only come from,
from your family?

Yes, because if they could not
take the fire from us,

it means it could not
be burned, the body,

even prime minister die.

Even the prime minister?

Even prime minister die.

- Is it allowed to see?
- Yes, allowed to see.

May we come? We follow you.

- Yes.
- OK.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: The sacred
fire from which all

funeral pyres must be lit

has been kept
burning here continuously

for thousands of years.

WOOD: So is this
the fire here?

CHOUDHARY: There's a fire here,
and it's a fire

momently keeping here

since three and a half
thousand years.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
In all societies in history,

religions offer a path
to salvation,

but in practice,
religions create bonds,

both physical and mental.

The essence of
India's ancient system

was that salvation only came
by the precise performance

of the right rituals
in the right time and place.

CHOUDHARY:
Before he start burning

he must walk around five times
because of the five elements.

Earth, water, wind,
fire, ether.

Fire, water, air,
earth, ether.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: In the ritual
universe, order is vital.

And so it was with society
in the Fifth Century B.C.

Know your place in the order,
perform the necessary rituals,

fulfill your duty--whatever
caste you're born into.

You and your family

are very, very important
people in India.

In a way, in a way
of thinking.

In a way of thinking,
but in a way of naturality,

if you say people think us,
we are the very low caste,

we cannot touch him,
we cannot go with him--

You are low caste,
you are...

We are untouchable;
we are paria...

when we walk
in the street,

people don't like
to touch us,

there is a bigger thing.

Really, so even though--

because you perform,
you do the rituals for the dead

and you touch the dead,
you are very low caste.

But everybody needs you.

Without us
they cannot do.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: From ancient
times, that was the Indian way,

and it's lasted
thousands of years.

A system of power
from the Iron Age,

now being renegotiated
in modern democratic India.

But it was challenged before.

People first started
to question the old order

in the Fifth Century B.C.--
and not just in India.

In China, there was
Confucius and Lao Tzu,

across in the Mediterranean
the Greek philosophers,

in Israel
the Old Testament prophets.

It was a revolutionary time
for humanity:

the birth of conscience,

putting ethics at the center
of the world.

And nowhere were these
qguestionings more intense

than in India.

Speculation about the nature
of the universe

and the nature of the self and
the connection between the two

is one of the oldest obsessions
of Indian civilization--

they were at it
even in the Bronze Age.

But in the cities of the
Ganges plain here in India

in the Fifth Century B.C,

a host of thinkers arose:

rationalists, skeptics,
atheists.

There were those who denied
the existence of the after life

and reincarnation,

there were those,
like the Jains,

who believed that all living
creatures were bonded together

in a chain of being across time.

There were scientists,

very closely resembling
their contemporaries

in the lonian islands in Greece,

the Greek philosophers,

who suggested that the world
was composed of atoms

and that everything was change.

And there were those
who said there were

immutable laws of the cosmos
and all change was illusory.

But the most influential
of these thinkers,

in the history of India
and in the history of the world,

was the Buddha.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
The Buddha's story is

the stuff of fairy tales.

He came from a world
of princely magnificence,

and nowhere does
princely better than India.

Young, newly wed, high caste,
he had everything.

But then in a sudden bolt
of lightning

he saw reality of human life for
everyone--suffering and death.

So there and then young Gautam
left behind his wife and family

and set out on the road,
seeking truth.

6 years he wandered,
a longhaired drop out,

until he finally came here
to Bodhgaya.

[Speaking foreign language]

Hi.

Today nearly 400 million people
are Buddhists,

from Burma and Korea to China
and now the West.

Young Gautam will
reshape history

but at this moment
when he first comes here,

he's another ragged renouncer.

The Buddha had come here to do
what Indian holy men did,

practicing almost unbelievable
austerities,

"I ate so little those days,"
he said later,

"that my buttocks looked as
knobbly as a camel's hoof.

"The bones of my spine stuck out
like a row of spindles,

"and my ribs looked like
a collapsed old shed.

"And much good did it do me."

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
And that's his voice,

a vivid, realistic turn of
phrase, not holier than thou.

His years on the road
had taught the ex-prince

to speak the common language.

So he sits here under a pipal
tree seeking enlightenment.

It's one of the great moments
in history.

And this is the very place.

This is the Diamond Throne.

The throne.

The Diamond Throne.

This is the place where the
Buddha is believed to have sat

and attained enlightenment.

No, not "believed."

This is the place where he sat
and attained enlightenment.

This is also called
the Navel of the Earth.

So for all Buddhists
a most sacred place.

For all the Buddhists
from all over the world

this is the most sacred place
for worship and veneration.

[Chanting]

Some of his devotees wanted a
statue of the Buddha to be made.

He then and there rejected
the idea, the proposal.

And he said "that if at all
people need something

"then it should be
the bodhi tree,

"which has given me shelter
underneath to sit and meditate

"and attain the supreme bliss
that I had experienced;

"and it will also give shelter
to thousands and thousands

"of people who are
in search of truth."

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
How often we make our history

the story of the great
conquerors, the men of violence:

Alexander, Napoleon, Hitler.

That's what we teach
our children

in their history books,
isn't it?

But here's one man who sits
under a tree thinking

and changes the world.

But this is an Indian story...

By the morning, the Buddha
had crystallized in his mind

what he called
The Four Noble Truths.

In essence the idea
was very simple:

the nature of
the human condition,

he thought, is suffering.

And suffering is caused
in the end by human desire,

by attachment, by covetousness

in the inner life
and in the outside world.

"Free yourself from those
desires," the Buddha thought,

"and you can become
a liberated human being...

"but it can only
come from within."

MAN: Ultimately, inner
happiness, inner satisfaction

must create by one's self.

You could be
a billionaire,

but deep inside
very lonely person,

very lonely feeling.

So therefore,
as a human being,

regardless believer
or non-believer,

these inner human value
is very essential

in order to have
happier individual,

happier family, happier society,
or happier nation.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
the core of the Buddha's ideas

was The 8-fold Path.

Respect for living things,
compassion, truth,

and non-violence.

It sounds obvious, but it had
a revolutionary aim,

to free Indian people from their
ancient and unjust cycle

of caste and rebirth.

The Buddha travels a couple of
hundred miles from Bodhgaya to

Sarnath just outside Varanasi.

Here in the deer park
he picks up five old friends

from his time on the road.

They become his first disciples

and he tries his ideas out
on them...

and on this spot
now marked by the Great Stupa,

he gives what becomes known
as the first sermon.

MAN: This first sermon is called
"Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta."

it means setting the wheel
of doctrine on motion.

Setting the wheel of doctrine--
or law--in motion.

The wheel, yes.

The teaching of Buddha
is not only for monks.

It is for all. Huh?

[Speaks foreign language]

It means for the well-being
of many.

And for the next
more than 40 years

the Buddha journeyed
and preached--

45 years.

45 years
journeyed and preached.

MAHATHERO WATHAI: He walked.
He never stay at one place.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
And now the real journey begins:

he wanders, no possessions,
on foot,

begging through the small world
of the Iron Age kingdoms

of the Ganges plain.

But the thing to remember
is he's a protester.

Through the whole
of Indian history

there's a tension
between the rulers

and those who fought
for social justice.

From the wandering medieval
saints to the freedom fighters,

and the flood of modern poets
and agitators,

he's the first of
India's million mutineers.

Then he comes here to Rajgir,

invited by the king
who saw something in him.

The king gave him some land
on which to build a hut,

a bamboo grove...

it's still here.

This was a place where there
were monks living all the time.

We know places
in the scroll,

like Karanda Katang,
which is still here,

the squirrel's
nesting place,

the peacock's
dancing place--

SO you can imagine
what it was like.

Every year he went back
to the same place.

So people knew
where he was.

It was a good time
for monks to re-gather

and if anybody wanted
to be with the Buddha,

for example, they could
come to the same place.

It's quite impressive,
you know,

he's got a 1,250 disciples
by that time.

The king comes to meet him

as was tradition and even
tradition now.

Kings or powerful politicians
go and meet religious leaders,

not the other way round.

The king says
"I had five wishes,

"the first was to be king,

"the second was to be able to
receive an enlightened person,

"the third was to able
to hear him speak,

"the fourth was to be able
to understand that,

"and the fifth was to be able
to be grateful for that."

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
In the hills above Rajgir

there's a little cave
where the Buddha lived

through the monsoon seasons.

SETH: The Buddha really
loved this place;

it was a little higher
than the surrounding area.

It was one of his favorite
places for meditation,

he even says so.

He loved watching
the sunset from here.

And he just came again
and again just

for the sheer pleasure of it.

This cave actually is lovely
because you can know

the Buddha is in this cave.

As you go into the cave,

it's a little sort of lower
in height in the beginning

and then it gets deeper
sO you can stand up inside.

And you can just sit here and
meditate for hours and hours

and just be with the Buddha.

You can really feel
the breath of the Buddha--

even though he was
2,500 years ago--

you can really feel his presence
in this cave now.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
And again that realistic voice,

"Be your own lamp," he said,

"seek no other refuge
but yourselves.

"Let truth be your light."

The Buddha has often been called
the greatest Indian.

But though his teachings
conquered half the world,

they largely died out at home...

but India never forgot
his ethical message,

for it was embraced by thinkers

in mainstream Hindu religion
in later times.

And in a land teeming
with images of the divine,

perhaps the reason for
its ultimate rejection here

is not hard to see.

Buddhism is a system
based on pure morality,

what we would call
universal values:

trust, truthfulness,
non-violence,

that sort of thing.

And those ideas
were very attractive

to the rising class
of merchants and traders

in the cities
of the Ganges plain.

But it's also atheistic;

the logic of the Buddha's
message is that belief

in god itself is
a form of attachment,

of clinging, of desire.

And in the land of 33 million
gods, or is it 330 million--

that eventually would prove
a step too far.

"But all things must pass,"
as he would say.

No one in history was
clearer about that.

The year of the Buddha's death
is still not sure.

The traditional date
is 486 B.C.

He was an old man now,
around 80,

on his last journey among the
scavengers and the dispossessed

with their unending struggle
for mere survival.

Towards the end the Buddha made
his way back across the plain

towards the Himalayas.

Now he's heading north, back
to the land of his childhood.

Perhaps he was consciously
heading home.

He knew he was going to die.

[Horns honking]

The Buddha's story ends in an
endearingly scruffy little town

on the Ganges plain: Kushinagar.

On the stalls, India's deities--
old and new--

and he's become one of them,
against his wishes of course.

One of the Buddha's faithful
disciples begged him to hold on

a bit longer and not die here.

"It's a miserable wattle
and daub little place,

"stuck in the jungle in
the middle of nowhere," he said,

"couldn't you die in a famous
place where they could

give you a great funeral?"

And the Buddha said,
"A small place is fitting."

He took some food in the house
of a black smith--pork.

Like most ancient Indians
the Buddha was a meat eater.

And he fell ill.

Again the tradition
marks the very spot

on the edge of Kushinagar.

At the end his disciples
can't bear to let him go.

"What more do you want of me?"
he says.

"lI have made known the teaching.

"Ask no more of me.
You're the community now.

"I have reached the end
of my journey."

There are several versions
of the Buddha's last moments,

one of them said that
he made a gesture and exposed

the upper part of his body

to show how age and sickness
had wasted it,

to remind his followers
of the human condition.

But all versions agree that
his last words were these:

"All created things must pass.

Strive on, diligently."

At the time of the Buddha's
death, tremendous events were

transforming the old world.

The greatest power on Earth then
was the Persian empire,

stretching from Greece
to India....

but a new age was dawning.

In the Fourth Century B.C., a
new power, the Greeks, marched

east to attack what they saw
as the evil empire.

And Europe faced Asia in the
perennial battleground of Iraq.

What happened here would change
the story of India.

Great ideas in history
don't always spread

beyond their own country.

The ideas of the Buddha remained
a local cult in the Ganges plain

for 200 years after his death.

And the catalyst for change,
as so often in history, was war.

On the First of October
331 B.C,

the greatest battle of antiquity
was fought here near

the little village of Gaugamela.

A true war of the worlds.

It was waged between the might
of the Persian Empire,

which ruled as far as the Indus
valley and the plains of India,

and an army which had marched
from Greece

under an extraordinary
young general,

the 25-year-old
Alexander the Great.

Alexander's invasion of the East

was a true a clash
of civilizations.

A different model for history,

one that we in the West have
always be seduced by:

the East as the other.

The heroic leader as superman.

The man whose giant ego
literally overwhelms

the Persian divine king Darius

and subdues history itself
to his will.

MAN: Alexander was a globalist.

Alexander would thoroughly
understand the world today.

The thing that unifies
all armies

is the will of the commander.

Even in a battlefield
like this

which comprised
at that stage

maybe 150,000 to
200,000 individuals

on this plain
at that time,

this all came down
to a contest of wills

between two individuals.

WOOD: And they both understood
that, did they?

FRY: Oh, I think
they entirely--

WOOD: And they can see
each other,

they actually
see each other--

FRY: Exactly, and the spears
thrusting into the faces

of the Persians,

at which point Darius
takes flight

and drives his chariot
out and away back

down to the river.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
The Persians were defeated,

but Alexander
didn't stop there.

Alexander's teacher Aristotle,
another seeker after truth,

had a very different take
on the world from the Buddha:

"The Greeks have strength
and reason," he said,

"so it's right
they should rule the world."

At this point the Greeks didn't
know how big the world was.

They thought you ought to be
able to see the end of the Earth

from the top of the mountains
of Afghanistan.

Soon they would be amazed
by India's size and riches.

So Alexander pressed on
over the mountains--

his battle-hardened veterans
tramping through the Khyber Pass

and then down
into the plains of India.

It was the first meeting
of India and the West.

Alexander finally stopped in the
Punjab near today's Amritsar.

The Greek army reached
the River Beas here

in the beginning
of September, 326 B.C.

But it wasn't any Greek army
that you've imagined before.

Some of them are wearing central
Asian clothes, Persian trousers,

Indian cotton tunics.

This isn't
a classical Greek army;

it's close to
a science fiction army,

an ancient Greek version
of "Mad Max."

and in the middle of them,
Alexander the Great

in his parade uniform

with his ram's horn helmet
with its great white plumes

and on his armor
the head of a gorgon,

which was supposed to turn
to stone anybody

who gazed into its eyes.

Well, there was one person here
who wasn't turned into stone.

A young Indian had come
to Alexander's camp.

He was deeply impressed by
this spectacle of imperialism,

by the glamour
of Alexander's violence.

And he would become one
of the greatest figures

in Indian history,
who would create

the greatest Indian empire
before modern times.

His name: Chandragupta Maurya.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: In time,
Chandragupta seized power,

drove Alexander's successors
out of India

and ruled from
the Khyber to Bengal,

and his state is the first
forerunner of today's India.

In 300 B.C., the Greeks sent
their ambassadors to him bearing

gifts and they give
the first ever account

of India from the outside.

From stone age tribes
in the Himalayas

to the cities of the plains.

A land of a 118 nations,
rich and fertile

with rivers so wide they
couldn't see the other side.

One of them, the Greeks said,

worshiped by all Indians--
the Ganges.

The embassy eventually arrived

at Chandragupta's
capital, Patna.

The Greek ambassadors
were amazed by what they saw:

the city stretched 9 or 10 miles
along the bank of the Ganges.

And all along
the river frontage,

they saw palaces,
pleasure gardens...

the Greek ambassador
Megasthanese said,

"I've seen the great cities
of Asia,

"I've seen Susa in Persia,

"but nothing compares
with this."

And if Megasthanese's
description is accurate,

this was indeed
the greatest city in the world.

The city stood at the junction
of 4 rivers and measured

22 miles in circuit.

In the king's camp
were over 400,000 men

with 3,000 war elephants...

and he never traveled in state

except with his bodyguard
of female warriors,

Indian Amazons
loyal only to him.

Good morning.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: What must
the Greeks have thought?

The ambassador came ashore
beneath giant defenses

studded with 570 towers
and 64 gates.

Fantastic.

There's the edge of old Patna.

Of course in the days
when the Greek ambassadors came,

you've got to remember
it was a new city then,

a new imperial city.

There would have been
brick kilns everywhere

that would be needed
in a great city like this.

Since then Patna
has seen 7 Indian capitals

built on top of each other,

the last of them the medieval
Muslim city you see today,

a decaying metropolis
left behind by history.

It's an amazing city, Patna,
because you've got

the layers of the past
sort of superimposed here.

Tombs of Muslim saints
sit on ancient Buddhist mounds.

It's a city where
all India's communities

have mixed over centuries;

and left the tangled roots
of history,

as so often in India,
all still alive.

With its crumbling palaces
and merchants' mansions

it's like wandering through an
Indian version of ancient Rome.

What a beautiful building.

[Voices]

Hello.

How old is the house?

[Indistinct]

WOOD: 105 years.

Right, right, it's a
lovely house anyway.

But what about the very earliest
layer of Patna,

the imperial city
of Chandragupta,

visited by the ancient Greeks?

In a forgotten corner
of the city

is the last pleasure lake
of Chandragupta's capital.

And here on a little island
is an ancient shrine

of the Jain religion,

whose founder Mahavira was
a contemporary of the Buddha

and preached non-violence
to all living things--bar none.

Tucked away here,

um, the remains of a temple

going back to the time of
Chandragupta himself.

The shrine is dedicated
to Chandragupta's guru,

and it holds the key
to the incredible tale

of how at the height
of his power the king

renounced his empire.

India, so the story goes,
was ravaged by famine.

The powerless king
turned to a Jain guru

and bowed to him as in the end
all Indian rulers must.

And so he left his throne
and headed south in penance

to the mountain
of Sravanabelgola,

where in the myth
the ancient king Bahubali

had also renounced his kingdom
for moksha--salvation.

WOMAN: His mother had a dream
in which the goddess told her,

you have to go and seek
the blessings of Lord Bahubali.

Chandragupta Maurya,
he took a bow and an arrow,

and then he shot the arrow only
where he could see that just,

he could see the impression
of the statue.

And then he got the artists

who could carve this statue
of Lord Bahubali.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
So Chandragupta Maurya,

the most powerful man
in the world,

became a naked holy man
on a windy mountaintop,

seeking moksha--
liberation through knowledge.

[Chanting]

MAN: Chandragupta Maurya,
when he came here,

he wanted to renounce
everything.

And for himself he wanted
to get into the penance

and then moksha.

They say he stood there
renouncing his whole

kingdom, everything.

While he is doing penance
nobody eats anything.

Finally, they attain moksha.

Not one or two.

WOOD: And that means they die?

They die, yes.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
The first great king of India

starved himself to death
in this cave,

witness to
the age-old injunction:

to pursue knowledge
and liberation

above all other things.

Chandragupta made
the first great Indian state,

a template of all future Indias
right down to today.

A religious renouncer
at the end,

but what he bequeathed
the future was the idea

of secular authority,

a universal king who was
the source of power and of law.

Chandragupta was a great figure
in world history,

not just in India,

but what happened
after his death is

an even more incredible story,

and all the more so because
it was lost for centuries.

The story was only rediscovered
in modern times

and the tale takes us
to Calcutta in the days

of the British empire.

It was here that the lost script
of the Mauryan Empire

was deciphered in 1837
in the Asiatic Society.

A young Briton with a talent
for codes and ciphers

became fascinated by mysterious
inscriptions on great pillars

in Delhi and Allahabad.

His name was James Princep.

Princep's attention was drawn
to a carved boulder,

which turned out to be
India's Rosetta Stone.

The decipherment came
like so many great examples

of code breaking--by a hunch.

Princep guessed that this
unknown script contained

a form of early Sanskrit.

He began to put
two and two together.

He realized that this strange
squiggle with an inverted "T"

and a dot next to it was
probably the sign

for a gift--danam, in Sanskrit--

the gift of somebody,
of something.

He realized that this strange
hooked "C" was a possessive:

sO and so's gift.

And then he cracked
an absolutely crucial phrase,

which occurred over and over
again in these inscriptions--

and on the great pillars
in Delhi and Allahabad.

The phrase begins this
inscription here.

[Reading foreign language]

"The raja Piadarsi,
beloved of the gods, says this."

It was a king, and a king who,
judging by the inscriptions,

had ruled from
the Himalayan foothills

almost to the south of India,

from the bay of Bengal
almost across to Afghanistan.

And a king whose memory had
completely vanished from

the historical record in India.

The name of the beloved
of the gods

was non-other than
Chandragupta's grandson Ashoka.

[Clamoring]

And back in Patna,
the capital of his empire,

he'd never been forgotten.

And here I was expecting a dry
as dust archaeological site.

That's India for you.

The place is
an ancient sacred well

still used by the people of
Patna in there thousands

for their marriage ceremonies.

[Speaking foreign language]

It's now an auspicious place,

but it's remembered in legend

as a place of torture,
a living hell.

And the name of the king
who built it?

WOOD: Namaste.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: Ashoka.

WOOD: This is the well?

MAN: This is the Agam Kuan.

- Can we have a look?
- Yeah.

WOOD: According
to the legend told here,

Ashoka decided to build what
was called a "hell on earth,"

which was on this spot,
a kind of prison

with great high walls
within which terrible tortures

were devised for people
who went against his rule.

The legends of Ashoka the Cruel
had been told for centuries

but the inscription deciphered
by James Princep

gave real history.

It tells of Ashoka's brutal
attack on the eastern kingdom

of Kalinga, today's Orissa.

WOOD: So if Ashoka is
going to invade Kalinga,

this river he must cross,
is that right?

Yes, so this was the entry point
for the Mauryan army?

MAN: Yeah.

WOOD: So the real story begins
with a brutal war of aggression.

And only in the last year
have archaeologists in Orissa

found the first evidence
for the fighting.

Wow, that's very clear,
isn't it?

And what does it say?

It is clearly written:

"Tosalinagar"...

WOOD: Na gar.

We know that Tosali
is the name

of the capital of Kalinga
at the time of Ashoka.

This Tosali,
it is the name

appears in holy inscription.

MAN: This is a weapon.

PRADHAN: This is your arrowhead.

This is metallurgically
resembling with

Mauryan iron instruments.

So this kind of thing
has been found

in the Ganges valley.

So all this metal work
has come from

a very small area
of excavation?

MAN: Very small, yes.

WOOD: A host of spear heads,
arrowheads, bits of weaponry.

This is only
a tiny sample

that the Mauryan army fired an
immense amount of weaponry

at the people of Kalinga.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
The king, the beloved of

the gods, attacked Kalinga,
says the inscription;

150,000 people
were carried away captive,

a hundred thousand were killed
in the fighting,

and almost as many
died afterwards.

"But after the Kalingas
had been crushed," it continues,

"there arose in the king
a great conflict,

"a regret for his conquest,
and a yearning for justice."

"In war," said Ashoka,
"everyone suffers.

"There is killing and injury,

"people are cut off forever
from the ones they love.

"War is a tragedy for everyone."

Ashoka had hit on one of the
most dangerous ideas in history:

non-violence.

Ashoka now renounced war
and turned to Buddhism.

On the battlefield he built
domed stone memorials--stupas--

in atonement.

"All we human beings,"
says Ashoka,

"whatever our station in life,

"share the same human values:

"love of parents,
respect for our elders,

"kindness and attachment
to friends and neighbors,

"even to servants and slaves."

"From now on," says Ashoka,

"I desire non-violence
for all creatures,

"and I resolve to conquer
by persuasion alone."

Of course, one should
always take the words

of politicians and leaders
with a pinch of salt,

especially when they've waged
an aggressive war.

But in this case Ashoka's words
are so personal,

so self-recriminating,
and so idiosyncratic

that it's hard not to think that
it's his voice speaking to us.

When the war in Kalinga
was over, he says,

and the people conquered,

he felt inside him
a great crisis,

a striving for meaning
and remorse.

So like his grandfather, Ashoka
goes on pilgrimage across India,

seeking a guru, a teacher.

And by the riverbank,

he met the son of perfume seller
from Varanasi, a Buddhist monk.

And the monk told him to go
and sit beneath the bodhi tree,

where the Buddha
had found enlightenment.

And there the power of ideas
and the power of the state

came together
in a uniquely Indian way.

A rejection of the path
of violence,

indeed of a whole way
of understanding history.

While he was here, Ashoka gave
rich gifts to the poor

and the sick
of this part of Bihar.

He consulted with the local
communities about proper

governance, about good conduct--

citizenship I suppose
we'd call it today.

Forming in his mind now was
an idea for a political order

such had never been
conceived of before

in the history of the world.

All over India he carved
his edicts on rocks

and great stone pillars,

and he erected stupas
where he enclosed portions

of the ashes of the Buddha,

symbols of the source
of his moral authority.

Copies of the edicts
are still being discovered,

20 of them
in the last 40 years.

This one's near
the battle site in Orissa.

One of the great documents
in the history of the world.

One of the great ideas in
the history of the world.

The forerunner,
the first forerunner

of the U.N. Declaration
of Human Rights.

This amazing outpouring of ideas
all boils down to one idea:

all humans are one family.

As Ashoka says,
"All men are my children."

Does that make Ashoka's state
sound suffocatingly controlling?

Well, maybe.

But as Ashoka himself admitted,

it's "hard to persuade people
to do good."

His edicts
didn't just cover humans:

his are the first animal rights
laws in world.

He even had police to enforce
them, as they still do today.

As a result, India today
has the world's oldest

animal hospitals in the world.

WOOD: So this is...
WOMAN: This is Raja.

WOOD: This is Raja, who is
the oldest inmate here.

Almost the oldest
inmate, yes.

WOMAN: Hi, Raja!
WOOD: Hello, Raja.

There's a fantastic passage
in one of Ashoka's edicts

where he says, "I have
made these provisions,

"which are to ban the killing
of certain animals.

"But the greatest thing
we could do is to protect

"all living things."

He talks about practical things,
but then the ideal.

WOMAN: He understood if
you're cruel to animals,

you will be cruel
to humans as well.

Since animals
are powerless,

it shows
your true nature

in your
interaction with them

because since they can't
do anything back to you

and you don't have to be worried
about anybody reacting,

you can be
your true self.

In history there have been many
empires of the sword

but only India created
an empire of the spirit.

And from the edicts
we learn that Ashoka

didn't even stop there.

He sent embassies to the kings
of Greece and Macedonia,

North Africa, Syria, Babylonia.

All part of his project
for the brotherhood of man

and world peace.

Ashoka also insisted
on toleration between

India's many religions.

It's fitting then that here
at the sacred confluence

of the river Ganges--

where Indian kings traditionally
made greats acts of charity

to all faiths--his greatest
pillar edict still stands today.

A testimony to India's
eternal quest for dharma:

a just law of life.

There's a key idea that lies

behind all these edicts
of Ashoka.

And simply it's this:
the message isn't from god.

What Ashoka's doing is taking
the ideas of the Buddhists,

The 8-fold Path--
truthfulness, compassion,

right-conduct--and the teachings
of the Jains on non-violence,

and making them, not only
the core of personal morality,

but of politics.

The social welfare legislation,

the teachings
on religious toleration

and even the ecological measures
on the conservation of species

and plants--from the rhino
to the Ganges porpoise--

the conservation of forests,

preservation from needless
destruction.

It's moving the sphere of
politics away from the sanctions

of religion and magic

to the rule of reason
and morality.

What's on that pillar
is an extraordinary product

of an extraordinary time.

And when the time came to
free India from British rule,

what better symbol
for the national flag

than Ashoka's Wheel of Law.

As for the man himself,
his last days are a mystery.

But the legends tell of an old
man stripped of everything.

All things must pass--
even Buddhism itself.

It became the greatest religion
of the ancient world.

It's still a power in Asia,

but in the middle ages it died
in the heartland of India.

In the 18th Century
when British explorers

came seeking its lost history,

they dug in the jungle here
at Kushinagar, where he died.

And under the forest
they found an astonishing

image of the Buddha

in the moment death,
the moment of nirvana.

And that would begin
the next cycle of the story.

Spreading the Buddha's message
to new lands of the West

and to continents
the Buddha had never dreamed of.

All across the world now
there is a big interest

in the Buddha,
in Western people also.

Why do you think this is?

Buddha message true.

So all people accept.

WOOD: The Buddha's
message is true.

Yes.

Next in "The Story of India"...

silk roads and spice routes
and china ships.

Epics of the south,
and lost empires of the north.

And the happiest time
in the history of the world.