The World

Rebranding himself as chakravartin, wheel-turning monarch, and dharmaraja, he ‘very earnestly practised dharma, desired dharma and taught dharma’, which was the universal law of righteousness, one of the essential teachings of Buddha. He preached tolerance and peace – ‘the essential advancement of all sects … One should honour each sect by the other.’ According to Buddhist sources, he opened up seven of the original eight stupas that contained the Buddha’s relics, and built 84,000 stupas – clearly an exaggeration – to redistribute the relics. He also oversaw the Third Buddhist Council and sent missionaries, led by his son Mahendra and daughter Sanghamitra, to spread the teachings south to Sri Lanka, but also westwards to five Greek kings – just as a Greek satrap, Diodotos I, seized parts of Afghanistan and Tajikistan to found his own Hellenic-Bactrian kingdom.

Ashoka’s Buddhism had to be enforced by special officers, dharma-mahamattas: ‘This dharma edict is engraved so it may long endure … as long as my sons and grandson live …’ Buddhist sources claim his beliefs were resisted by Brahmins among his own family. Meanwhile to the east a conqueror was uniting China for the first time.

HEART OF TIGER AND WOLF: ENTER THE QIN

In 247 BC, the militaristic kingdom of Qin – pronounced Chin – was disastrously inherited by a thirteen-year-old boy, Ying Zheng, who was humiliatingly dominated by his mother, said to be addicted to her prodigiously well-endowed lover. From this ill-starred beginning, this homicidal, brilliant and half-mad visionary would create China.

Ying was the scion of a family who had started in the 860s as horse breeders for the Zhou kings. For centuries, the family had governed a small remote north-western fiefdom that was on the edge of civilization, regarded by the Zhou as barbarians. At a time when ideas of morality later known as ‘Confucian’ were embraced by a small number of followers, the Qin forged their kingdom into a brutal and efficient force that thrived in the Warring States period – that is, during the perpetual wars over several centuries between the seven or so contending kingdoms who ruled what would become China. A century earlier, the Qin had appointed a minister, Shang Yang, who enforced a system that placed the clan above the individual, dividing people into units of families which were responsible for the actions of all its members collectively: ‘Whoever didn’t denounce a culprit would be cut in two; whoever denounced a culprit would receive the same reward as he who decapitated an enemy.’ Before his own execution, Shang started the aggressive expansion of Qin.

Now after a succession of feckless dukes, Ying found himself ruler. His father Zhuangxiang had not expected to rule but, while held as a hostage abroad, he met a merchant, Lu Buwei, who had a beautiful concubine, Lady Zhao. The prince fell in love with her and Lu presented her to him as a present. When Zhuangxiang became king, he appointed Lu as his chancellor, while Lady Zhao gave birth to the boy Ying Zheng, whose enemies would naturally claim that the merchant rather than the king was his real father.

In 246, the king died, and the thirteen-year-old Ying bided his time as he was guided by Lu and his mother, who became lovers again. Thinking better of this, Lu distracted the queen mother by introducing her to ‘a man named Lao Ai who had an unusually large penis’. To make sure she heard about his equipment, Lu had Lao dance to sensual music and supposedly ‘stick his penis through the centre of a wheel … so as to excite her interest’. This artful presentation worked. The queen was hooked. Lao Ai, now promoted to marquess, secretly had two sons with her, convinced he could outwit the young king and enthrone one of these babies. Women in east Asian kingdoms were often politically active – and the denunciation of female potentates for their sexual voracity would be a way of denigrating their rule throughout history. On the other hand, private and political lives were intertwined in personal monarchies; spatial and emotional closeness to the ruler was essential to win the trust of vigilant rulers; and women were neither more nor less likely to be influenced by sex or friendship than their male equivalents. Whatever the proportions of his penis, Lao was no match for the young king’s ‘heart of tiger and wolf’. Ying Zheng was terrifying, with a ‘waspish nose, eyes like slits, a chickenish chest and a voice like a jackal’, according to a visitor, and ‘he’s merciless’ … but he could also be charming, lavishing ‘clothes, food, drink’ on his visitors.