Explained connection Patronage
Ashoka's patronage and the spread of Buddhism
Ashoka's inscriptions are the best-dated evidence anywhere of a state supporting a religious tradition — and the clearest case of why that is not the same as a population adopting it.
What supports it
3 points in its favour
- More than thirty inscriptions survive on pillars, boulders and cave walls across what is now India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan and Pakistan — the first tangible evidence of Buddhism and the earliest datable written texts from India.
- They are inscribed on stone, so they survive exactly as they were cut, which almost nothing else from the period does.
- They are located as well as dated: the geography of the evidence is itself part of the argument.
What limits it
4 points that limit it
- An edict is a proclamation, not a survey. It records what a ruler had carved; it records nothing at all about what anyone believed.
- Patronage is an act. It is not adherence, not the ruler's own practice in every period of a life, and not the practice of anyone they ruled.
- The later accounts of missionary activity — the Mahāvaṃsa above all — are centuries after the fact and were written in places with an interest in the story they tell.
- This site draws no map of adherents from any of it, and will not: see the atlas.
What this means
Patronage. A ruler or institution supported something. Not the belief of a population, and not the patron’s own practice in every period. It does not imply the religion of a population, or personal adherence in every period of a life.
It is not a path through the records. This site can always find a chain of statements between two well-known subjects, and that chain is a fact about this database rather than an argument about history — which is why a computed path is a different type, a different file and a different page from this one.
It is not a verdict either. The limits above are the same size as the support because they are the same kind of thing: reasons, of which some point one way.
Other explained connections.
Each with its own claim, its support and its limits.
- Documented influence Aphrodite was influenced by Inanna
Aphrodite and the Near Eastern love goddesses
A long-standing argument derives Aphrodite partly from Near Eastern goddesses of love and war — Ishtar and Astarte — transmitted through Cyprus and Phoenician contact. What supports it 3 Her two most-claimed birthplaces, Cythera and Cyprus, are both places of early and sustained Phoenician contact, and both gave her an epithet: Cytherea and Cypris. What limits it 4 It is one of at least three live proposals. The others derive her from an indigenous Cypriot goddess and from a Proto-Indo-European dawn goddess, and the question is not settled. 3 sources Read the argument - Documented influence Mithraic mysteries was influenced by Zoroastrianism
Roman Mithras and Iranian Mithra
The Roman mysteries of Mithras take their god's name from the Iranian Mithra, and very little else that can be demonstrated. What supports it 2 The name is the same, and Roman writers themselves described the cult as Persian. What limits it 4 Continuity of a name is not continuity of a cult. The Roman Mithras carries a new and distinctive imagery, and how much of the practice is continuous with Persian worship is exactly what remains debated. 2 sources Read the argument
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Side by side
Ashoka and Buddhism, compared.
What the records hold for both — and what sharing it does not prove.
Similarity is not
proof of origin.