India is renowned as an incubator of religion. The countless sects of this South Asian nation are widely known for its deep and abiding spirituality. In some ways, India's history is one of conflict between the most respected religions. Even today, India's political landscape is defined by the struggle between those who insist that religion is a nationality (Islam) and those who maintain that, as a historical entity, India is essentially Hindu and that all other faiths are intruders. India is full of history and shrines of the Hindu faith, although its most famous shrine, the Taj Mahal, is as Muslim as Mecca. Nevertheless, it is a Hindu aura that permeates India with the Western imagination. So what about the fact that there are Hindu shrines? After all, existing examples of truly ancient Hindu relics are rare. Perhaps the battle for India's souls has claimed even more casualties in the form of the Islamic tendency to destroy anything that comes into conflict with it. It is more likely, however, that the Hinduism of the world before King Ashoka was not the global cultural touchstone that most nationalist Indians believe. To the Western observer, Hinduism seems cruel, almost caricatured, and the animist gods are confusing. But these depictions of the forces that govern human existence are a direct reaction to Ashoka's decision to push the cruder elements of Hindu ritual underground, so to speak, and to adhere to the Buddhist principle that spirituality is the domain of every man, whatever his station in life. . No, just as Christianity in Europe adapted to the pagan ways of converts in order to embrace them, so too did Hinduism adopt the egalitarianism of the Buddhist faith. This was no coincidence, for India from the ashes...... middle of paper ......retrieved.BibliographyBhargava, Purushottam Lal and Radhakumud Mookerji. Chandragupta Maurya. Lucknow: Upper India Publishing House, 1935. Dhammika, Shravasti. The fourteen rocky edicts. Kandy: The Buddhist Publication Society, 1994. Geiger, Wilhelm. The Mahamvasa. Colombo: Government of Ceylon, 1912. Kumar, Raj. Early history of Jammu region. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 2004. Republic of India. “National symbols”. Last edited on February 21, 2014. http://india.gov.in/india-glance/national-symbols.Singh, Upinder. A History of Ancient and Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century. New Delhi: Pearson Publishing, 2008. Skilton, Andrew. A Concise History of Buddhism. Birmingham: Windhorse Publications, 1994.Strong, John S. The Legend of King Aśoka: A Study and Translation of the Aśokāvadāna. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.