No death penalties, no slavery, the compliance of animal rights on human standards and the emancipation of women in religion and politics, these are all the things that are still fought over and which are part of a modern civilization. These are all the things which the Buddhist ruler Ashoka has introduced to India in his reign between 274 – 232 BC!
Inconceivable, right? While in Europe, slavery and public executions were common in the Roman Empire, the center of the world culture, India was way ahead of them. It’s such a pity that the laws of Ashoka were not maintained to this day and spread all over the world because that would probably be the world everybody would love to live in.
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