{"product_id":"searching-for-ashoka-questing-for-a-buddhist-king-from-india-to-thailand-9788178246543","title":"Searching For Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Nayanjot Lahiri\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book spans the gap between travelogue, travel history, and historical memory in relation to the Emperor Ashoka. It explores how this most famous emperor of ancient India has been remembered and recast over time. Through several journeys in pursuit of mnemonic fragments, Nayanjot Lahiri unravels Ashoka’s various avatars across India, as well as in sites and cities associated with Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHer travels show how Ashoka came to be remembered – and forgotten – in distinctive ways at particular points in time and in specific locations. Ashoka’s visibility from antiquity to the modern era, Lahiri argues, involved a reinvention of his persona. Unlike the historical emperor, who spoke expansively about humane governance, in his afterlife he is a jumble of representations within Buddhist reimaginings. Lahiri shows how, by remembering Ashoka selectively, later kings appropriated and remoulded history to suit their own social vision or political agenda.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis is the first book on the afterlife of Ashoka to highlight the considerable variety in historical memories of the emperor, even as it reveals the threads that bind the several remembrances.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":45616515940503,"sku":"9788178246543","price":642.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9788178246543.webp?v=1769295000","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/searching-for-ashoka-questing-for-a-buddhist-king-from-india-to-thailand-9788178246543","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}