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Ashoka the Great – The Buddist Expansion #3 – Extra History



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The Great King Ashoka’s relentless quest for the revered relic – “The Ashes of the Buddha” – marked the genesis of his transformation and ignited the global spread of Buddhism. As he tirelessly wove religion, monasteries, and compassionate policies into the fabric of society, Ashoka also spurred infrastructural growth across his realm. Giving people access to a practical moral system to guide their lives under Buddhism.

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*Miss an episode in our Buddist Expansion Series?*
Part 1 – https://youtu.be/jMX-YgdFwd4
Part 2 – https://youtu.be/WTLLdDdiXlw
Part 3 – https://youtu.be/Vpv6ZsXR1aA
Part 4 – https://youtu.be/jXlqn8ISEGU
Part 5 – https://youtu.be/j6Gofj-wR2Y
Buddha’s Wife: https://youtu.be/lnqdehuG_xE
Series Wrap-up & Recommended Reading: https://youtu.be/eg1vJBWy5H0
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#ExtraHistory #Buddhism #History

37 Comments

  2. Iulaihe Peterz

    2:49
    fun fact in some verisons lord buddha and his students leave paradise to enter hell so they can save lost souls in purgotory with honest regret about what led them there even some demons converted and aact as their bodyguards

  3. Aleksy The Horse

    "Robs brain melted researching this"
    For the well being of his mind I do hope that he didn't dare to read the abhidharma texts.
    Everything in Buddhism, even the weird stuff can be understood with some nice explanations but not abhidharma.

    "When Buddhists are praying to Buddha who do they pray to? No one! Buddha achieved nirvana and therefore is gone"
    Only according to Theravadins (Like in Shri Lanka and Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and stuff). According to everybody else he is still hanging around. That's a good example for an asterisk into which you would constantly run into explaining the beliefs.

  6. Erin Norman

    This series is making me want to explore Buddhism, even if it does melt my brain researching

  10. Anil Maraj

    Two things. Proto Hinduism is not a thing. Secondly, the conversion after the Kalinga war is a historical fiction created for political reasons in the 20th century. 😢

  11. Prakhar Vighnesh

    Ashoka was already a Buddhist before invasion of Kalinga. There's no historical record to suggest that the conversion happened just after the Kalinga war.

  13. FakeBlocks

    Please do the Greek war of independence of 1821 against the ottoman empire next
    I've been asking for this since the first episodes of the sengoku Jidai

  14. kanishka rustom

    Hey, the amination style has improved so much over the the years! You guys should really pat yourself on the back.

    I'd like to add one interesting quirk to the story of Buddhism. The early Buddhist communities weren't really fond of depicting the Buddha himself esp in statue form. However, the philosophy of the Buddha was quite universal and got picked up in the region around Peshawar, Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan today. At that time, it was the only independent Greek Kingdom in the world, with ethnic Greeks (who spoke Greek at home and at court, known as the Yavana people, Yavana having the same root as Ionia) being an administrative upper class.
    The Indo Greeks created their own art style called the Gandhara school. It blended much of eastern Indian art and Greek motifs, so one may find historical examples depicting The Buddha with traditional Hindu gods like Indra, with Greek ones, like Heracles. The Buddha himself seems to wear tunics that look like he's wearing flowing water. Without them, the statuary art of Buddhism may not have ever existed.
    It's absolutely mesmerising art.
    Their famous king Menander also published a treatise on the philosophy, with his name, Milind being a very common name even today.
    In a way the Indo-Greek people got added to the subcontinent, and their descendants can be found from Afghanistan to India. I can't help but recommend Gandhara art to everyone reading this, but then again, I'm biased af.

  15. Sayak Choudhury

    I hope you cover emperor Kanishka and the Kushanas as well. Kanishka was as important towards the spread of buddhism as Ashoka was, especially mahayana Buddhism to the north.

  17. Vinuka Watawana

    Lord Buddha was actually born in Sri Lanka. After the reign of Emperor Ashoka in India, – who embraced Buddhism as a religion and created models of Buddhist religious places of Sri Lanka in India also – knowledge of pure Buddhist teachings and information about the Buddha's true origins were lost to history due to many wars and spreading of misinformation in Sri Lanka. So later, the British historians – who colonized India and Sri Lanka – looked at the fake Buddhist religious places built by Ashoka and wrote the history books, saying that the Lord Buddha was born in India.

    Also, True Buddhism is not a religion but rather a Dharma (teaching) as it does not believe in any Gods or creation, does not force people to follow just for the word, and does not have 'must follow' religious practices, like all other religions in the world.

  18. Vinuka Watawana

    Also, Yama is not the literal God of Death in Buddhism, but the concept of death. Much like Mara, which is the concept that represents the Cycle of Rebirth known as 'Sansara' and obstacles in the path of attaining 'Nirvana'. These concepts were later turned into physical beings to appeal to the general public. Hope I cleared that up.🙂

  19. LadyTsara

    So, not to be mean, but everytime I see an ad for Nebula I think about posting and asking this. I've had Nebula for over a year (the subscription autorenewed). As much as i'd like to support the creators, I would also like to actually get the episodes early, and that's been frustrating. I can almost never get the player to work on any browser. Is there a technical support or customer sedrvice team that can help? If there is, I've been unable to find the link.

  20. EvveeVeeVeeWuu

    @extrahistory
    What you say at 9:09 is wrong.
    The Sri Lankan flag has a Lion not because of Ashoka's influence, but because the country is home to the Sinhalese. Sinha from the Indo-European word Singheko, meaning lion. I don't know if Ashoka adapted the lion from persia or not. I always assumed that it the Lion was a native symbol in India as well due to having the same Indo-European roots.

    PLEASE GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT!

  23. Charles DeLeo

    So, in case many of you are wondering: why were there Greeks in India at the time of Ashoka’s reign? Well, this was largely a result of Alexander the Great’s campaigns in the region, when he defeated King Porus at the Hydaspes River in 326 BCE. When Alexander died, that part of his empire went to the Seleucids, and that quickly was taken by Ashoka’s grandfather, Chandragupta Maurya. There was also an Indo-Greek Kingdom in northwestern India at one point – an offshoot of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom that rebelled against the Seleucids. By the 2nd century CE, these Indo-Greeks were first conquered by the Indo-Scythians, and later the nomadic Yuezhi, who founded the uniquely cosmopolitan Kushan Empire in Central Asia and Northern India, and was predominantly Buddhist. Buddhism would be the main faith in Central Asia until the Battle of Talas in 758 CE, when the Buddhist Tang Dynasty was defeated by another rising power: Islam, and the main Islamic state at the time: The Abbasid Caliphate.

  26. Vanamala Kaushik

    Lol then why japanise other countries eat non veg 😑 if buddist were really against animals killing this proof is enough you added some made up story.

  27. Yagnesh Donda

    The starting part is so wrong. Ashoka had already converted to Buddhism 4 years before the bloody war.

  30. 95DarkFire

    While I love your presentation of this topic, I find it your pronounciation of "Boodah" very amusing.

  31. TheGayGhost

    Having grown up Mormon, I wish those religious stories were half as interesting as Buddhism's story. There aren't any killer robots in Mormonism, just a whole lotta racism.

  32. Double Human

    9:22 This is like the only time I have seen (well, I guess heard) exclusively one sided surround sound, actually he used for good but what did it end at 11:47

  34. Sunil Meena

    Honestly I wish Ashoka and even his sons should have been a ruthless. Then at least they would have build a strong foundation for India and not let the empire get crumbled in just 2-3 centuries.

  35. Preet 9

    The definition of being great is when u understand killing peoples don’t give you title of great

  37. M

    I never thought I’d be this into funny animated characters explaining the history of religions

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