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Ashoka

Charles Allen

India's lost emperor Ashoka Maurya has a special place in history. In his quest to govern India by moral force alone he turned Buddhism from a minor sect into a world religion, and set up a new yardstick for government. But Ashoka's bold experiment ended in tragedy and he was forgotten for almost two thousand years.

In this beautifully written, multi-layered journey Charles Allen describes how fragments of the Ashokan story were gradually discovered, pieced together by a variety of British Orientalists: antiquarians, archaeologists and epigraphists. In doing so, they did much to recover India's ancient history itself. The Lost Emperor tells the story of the man who was arguably the greatest ruler India has ever known.

  • Classification : HISTORY
  • Pub Date : JAN 10, 2013
  • Imprint : Abacus
  • Page Extent : 480
  • Binding : PB
  • ISBN : 9780349122380
  • Price : INR 599
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Charles Allen

Charles Allen is the author of a number of bestselling books about India, including Plain Tales from the Raj, Kipling Sahib, Ashoka and Coromandel. A traveller, historian and master storyteller, his books, which draw on detailed research, are a testament to a life spent uncovering the stories of the land of his birth. His lasting legacy lies in a series of books about British involvement in India, and the people whose scholarship helped trace the past of the subcontinent and discovered the common root of Indian and European languages. He died in 2020, leaving Aryans, close to completion, with his dear friend David Loyn, who has edited the book.

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