Lahore for over 700 years was a Buddhist city, only for the entire population to be murdered and burnt to the ground by the marauding Alchon Huns. Hence the need to, firstly, study Buddhist texts, and secondly, to learn lessons from our ancient history.

What I discovered was startling if ‘unbelievable’ is not a better word. Besides Buddhist texts, there is a need to remind ourselves of terrible act our rulers have committed, be them ancient Mauryan, or the Mughals, or the British or even Pakistanis, both armed and unarmed. Power corrupts is the famous idiom, and absolute armed power corrupts absolutely.

Texts tell us that the ‘greatest’ emperor of the sub-continent was Ashoka the Great, for he ruled over the entire land mass. To understand the ‘unbelievable’ I went through the English version of the ‘Mahavamsa’, titled ‘The Great Chronicle’ by George Turnout, who had translated it from the German translation by Wilhelm Geiger. Then there is the book ‘Dipavamsa’. There are other texts which I went through depending on what I sought.

These books, as well as other sources, tell us that to gain the throne, the ‘peace-loving’ Ashoka first killed his elder brother Susima with the help of numerous warriors of a Minister’s army. The Dipavamsa states that he killed a hundred of his brothers and was crowned four years later. (‘Ashoka in Ancient India’, Nayanjot Lahiri, Harvard, 2015). What interested me was just where these killings happened.

To my utter shock it transpired that 18 of the 100 were killed in the Punjab, with a reference that they were killed in the town on the Parushni or Iravati as the Ravi River was once called. One scholar is of the opinion that the figure of 100 seems a popular way of describing a terrible event.

Ashoka was initially called “Kamashoka” because he spent many years in ‘pleasurable’ pursuits. He was then called “Chandashoka” (“Ashoka the fierce”) because he spent some years performing evil deeds. The deeds given in these ancient books need to be described. My consideration was that they were committed on the banks of the Iravati.

The book describes the beautiful fruit garden around the city of Lava, and that the garden was built by Chandragupta Maurya, the grandfather of Ashoka. The ancient book ‘Ashokavadana’ a collection of stories written by Buddhist monks and translated by Jean Przyluski, tells of how his ministers who secretly treated him with contempt, were ordered to cut down each and every flower from the trees in the Chandragupta Garden of the city of Luv.

As it was virtually impossible for such an act to be completed, Ashoka allegedly cut off the heads of all the 500 ministers. Again the figure 500 ministers seems gross and has been challenged, but if this was even partially true, it was an act that has probably never taken place in history. This is how the cruel ‘Chandrashoka’ has been described.

These books also mention that Ashoka was in reality the illegitimate son of his father and he killed his six legitimate princes to ascend the throne. These acts took place over a four-year period before he ascended the throne. One source states that it is possible that Ashoka was not the rightful heir to the throne and he killed his brothers to acquire the throne.

However, the scholar Jean Przyluski is of the opinion that Buddhist writers could have exaggerated these events in an attempt to portray him as evil before his conversion to Buddhism.

But the story that attracted me to write this column was that one day Ashoka was walking through his garden with his concubines. He was in a happy mood and lay down under a beautiful ‘Ashoka’ tree. He went to sleep and the women, who did not like Ashoka and his acts, cut down flowers and branches of the tree. He woke up to a trimmed tree and burnt alive the concubines.

Now this seems improbable that 500 concubines were burnt alive. But then the Chinese traveller Faxian as well as the traveller Xuanzang, both claim that Ashoka spent special session learning how to torture people. Mind you there is an Ashoka pillar titled ‘Hell’ one near Taxila and the other near Patna.

As regards other rulers who ruled Lahore and the Punjab, there is the case of the Mughal emperor Akbar who invited the Punjabi freedom fighter Dullah Bhatti. He opposed the huge land tax imposed by the Mughals. Through trickery Dullah was called to the Lahore Fort, where he was allegedly skinned and hung alive outside the Akbari Gate. Dullah lies buried in the Miani Sahib graveyard.

Then there is the case of the Mughal emperor Jahangir and how he treated Guru Arjan Singh, the fifth of the ten Sikh gurus. As he refused to marry his son Hargobind to a Hindu minister of the emperor, he was bricked up in a room of the minister in Lahore’s Mochi Gate next to Lal Khoo, a sacred place that an Afghan mullah has taken over to extract money from people.

Hazrat Mian Mir used to come every day and threw ‘Rafique’s barfi’ and ‘Bers’ from the Lal Khoo tree from the bricked-up top window. After three months Jahangir discovered the Guru was healthy. He chained and marched him to the fort, where he was put on a hot iron plate. Such was Jahangir’s terror.

Mian Mir asked the emperor to at least let him have a bath in the River Ravi. Guru Arjan never returned from the dive. Legend has it that he will return on the Day of Reckoning. A well in Gurdwara Dera Sahib opposite the fort is where he dived and will allegedly return.

In the fort so many people have been tortured. Gen. Ziaul Haq tortured so many journalists and politicians who wished that the Army stay away from politics. He jailed ZA Bhutto and ultimately hung him on trumped-up charges. Even now things are no better – if not worse. A record number of journalists have been jailed, lashed and even killed.

But then power makes rulers commit the cruelest of acts. The various famous people who were tortured and killed, even skinned alive in the Lahore Fort, are numerous. While Ashoka certainly did after a long period of extreme cruelty, convert to Buddhism, and to a reputation of kindness, his stability was built on his cruel act of ‘consolidation’.

Our readers know a lot about the current treatment of journalists; one famous TV anchor being murdered abroad. To assume that a foreigner did it is childish. Mind you, we live in a period of record cruelty, where politics and profit go hand in hand. Now even laws are being changed to suit the armed rulers. One hopes better times return.

Published in Dawn, November 16th, 2025