greece, the final frontier? 137
(I or II) of Syria and his neighbours medical facilities for both animals
and men. Again, in his fth edict he mentions the functionaries called
dhamamahmtas, who supervised and promoted religious communities,
especially among western peoples like the Greeks.
All such religious and charitable activities may have been part of a
deliberate policy intended to gain in uence or to establish a foothold
in western countries. If the edicts are to be taken at face value, Aoka
seems thus responsible for large-scale activities in the West—and else-
where—that combine religion and politics, what we could call missions.
Without independent archaeological or textual con rmation, it is of
course impossible to prove Aoka’s claims. Nevertheless, I think there
is no point in considering them as boasting or in otherwise rejecting
them as untrue. The question is how important these missions were.
While the end-result is clear—nothing of them has survived—, there
may have been some temporary results or some indirect in uence. In
the rst place, we want to know how important they were for Buddhism.
It seems natural that the Buddhists have bene ted most from Aoka’s
policy because they themselves were likely to take the most advantage
of it. On the one hand they had a tradition of wandering, proselytising
preachers and on the other hand they apparently dropped ritualistic
or ethnocentric qualms about leaving India more easily than other
sects. One may wonder, though, to what extent these characteristics
may have precisely been the result of Aoka’s encouragement. It is no
coincidence that Pli sources place the rst international missionary
activities in Aoka’s time.^20 Although these texts are not necessarily to
be taken literally as historical sources, they are indicative of some new
kind of intense proselytising activity. They state that after the council
of Paliputra in ca. 250 BC, the thera Moggaliputta sent missionaries
in nine directions. Among them, Majjhantika went to Kashmir and
Gandhra, and Mahrakkhita to Yonakaloka.^21 Whether Yonakaloka^22
corresponds to speci c territories bordering on India like Gedrosia,
Arachosia, the Hindukush, or the Oxus region, where colonists of
Greek descent had settled down, or refers to the wider Hellenistic world,
is not clear. In any case, it is conspicuous that the number of ordina-
tions in relation to the number of conversions reported in the texts for
(^20) D pavasa, Samantapsdik, and Mahbodhivasa (cf. Lévi 1891, p. 207; Lamotte
1958, p. 320). 21
Lamotte 1958, pp. 320–321.
(^22) Lamotte 1958, pp. 328, 338.