Ashoka's Hell

According to the narrations of Ashokavadana, Emperor Ashoka, prior to his conversion to Buddhism, was a fierce and sadistic ruler, known as Ashoka the Fierce, or Chandashoka (Ashoka the Cruel), who sent his minions on a quest to find a vicious man to work as his official executioner. After some searching, Ashoka's men found a suitable candidate by the name of Girika who was so vicious that he killed his parents because they did not want him to become Ashoka's executioner. Girika was introduced to Ashoka, who soon appointed him the official executioner of his empire. ==Design==

According to legend, Girika persuaded Ashoka to design the torture chamber based on the suffering endured by people reborn in Buddhist hell. The Ashokavadana documents a long list of torture acts Girika designed and planned to force upon his prisoners including "prying open their mouths with an iron and pouring boiling copper down their throats". In the narrative of Ashokavadana, Ashoka asked Girika to disguise the torture chamber as a beautiful and "enticing" palace full of amenities such as exclusive baths and to decorate it with flowers, fruit trees and many ornaments. The palatial torture chamber was artfully designed to make people long to just look at it, and even attract them to enter, and was referred to as the "beautiful gaol". According to the mythology, beneath the veneer of beauty, inside the exclusive mansion, torture chambers were constructed which were full of the most sadistic and cruel instruments of torture including furnaces producing molten metal for pouring on the prisoners. In the Biographical Sutra of Emperor Ashoka the palace is described by the sentence: 'Emperor Ashoka constructed a hell'. Ashokavadana refers to Girika as Chandagirika or Girika the Cruel. It appears that Girika overheard a Buddhist monk recite the Balapanditasutta which contains vivid descriptions of the five tortures of hell, such as: He got his ideas of how to torture prisoners from there. The text describes Girika's attitude toward punishment as follows: "Such are the five great agonies, Girika reflected, and he began to inflict these same tortures on people in his prison". In addition, the Balapanditasutta compares the King's torture methods to the tortures of hell. ==Miracle in the chamber==

The Ashokavadana further mentions that sometime later a Buddhist monk by the name of Samudra happened to visit the palace and upon entering he was informed by Girika the Cruel, or Candagirika, that he would be tortured to death, and was subsequently led into the torture chamber. His torturers, however, failed to injure him and he appeared able to neutralise their torture methods by realising that the suffering of the other prisoners is part of the Buddhist dogma of suffering and attaining arhatship. Samudra is Guru Shakya Senge (Wylie: shAkya seng-ge, Skt: Guru Śākyasimha) of Bodh Gaya. Meaning "Undefeatable Lion", Padmasambhava as Shakya Senge manifests as Ananda's student, travels to the torture chamber and brings Ashoka the Cruel to the Dharma through a display of miracles. Narratives further describe that when Ashoka heard of these miracles, he was overcome with curiosity and decided to enter the chamber to verify for himself the veracity of the stories. After arriving there he witnessed Padmasambhava, or Samudra, levitating After his taming by Padmasambhava in the torture chamber, the king Ashoka the Cruel, or Candashoka, became known as the king Dharmashoka. ==Demolition==

The Ashokavadana describes the events leading to the demolition of Ashoka's torture chamber. According to the text, the torture chamber had become the site and the reason for his conversion to Buddhism. Girika, as the resident executioner of the chamber, however, reminded Ashoka of his pledge to kill anyone entering the chamber including Ashoka himself. Buddhist monk Xuanzang in his writings mentions that in the 7th century AD he had visited the place where Ashoka's torture chamber once was and that it was, even at that time, referred to in Hindu tradition as "Ashoka's Hell". In India, the palace is known as "Ashoka's Hell" and its location near Pataliputra became a popular destination for pilgrims. In the 5th century, Faxian, also a Buddhist monk, reports visiting it and his account of the story of the palace differs slightly from that of Xuanzang's. In the 1890s, British explorer Laurence Waddell, while in Patna, established that Agam Kuan, which means the "unfathomable well", was part of Ashoka's Hell as reported also by the two Chinese monks. However, in archaeological surveys, no evidence of head bones or a skeleton has been discovered from the well, which contradicts the Buddhist legend. == See also ==