King Aśoka and Medicinal Plants: Sustainability, Biodiversity, Forestry, Ethnobotany, State welfare and the Plant Foreign Diplomacy of the Mauryan Empire

Vijayalaxmi Rajiv Shinde; Adv Rajiv Ambadas Shinde

doi:10.71097/IJTAS.v17.i8.1404

King Aśoka and Medicinal Plants: Sustainability, Biodiversity, Forestry, Ethnobotany, State welfare and the Plant Foreign Diplomacy of the Mauryan Empire

Author(s)	Prof. Dr. Vijayalaxmi Rajiv Shinde, Mr. Adv Rajiv Ambadas Shinde
Country	India
Abstract	The Mauryan emperor Aśoka (c. 268–232 BCE) governed the first pan-Indian imperial polity (322–185 BCE) (मधु et al., 2026), and his rock and pillar edicts are the oldest large corpus of royal inscriptions in the subcontinent, whose central theme is dhamma — morality, virtue, and goodness (Singh, 2020). This paper examines the environmental and botanical dimensions of the Aśokan program: the provision of two kinds of medical treatment — for humans and for animals — and the import and planting of medicinal herbs, roots, and fruits; the creation of the world's first known veterinary hospitals; the protection of named animal species; the forestry and "green management" policies documented in the edicts and the Arthaśāstra, including the vṛkṣāyurveda ("science of trees"); and the ethnobotanical knowledge base of ancient Indian medicine preserved in the Charaka and Sushruta compendia. The paper then analyzes Aśoka's foreign policy as an early exercise of "plant diplomacy": extending medical facilities, cultivating herbal medicines, and sharing beneficial plants with neighbouring kingdoms and with the territories of the Hellenistic king Antiochus, the Cholas, the Pandyas, the Keralaputras, and Sri Lanka (Long, 2021; Prasad et al., 2023; Varier, 2020). Situating the Aśokan record within the broader tradition of Indian environmental ethics — sacred groves, nature worship, and faith-based conservation — the paper concludes that the Mauryan state under Aśoka constitutes the ancient world's most systematic experiment in the sustainable governance of medicinal plant resources, and that its diplomatic deployment of those resources anticipates, by more than two millennia, the modern convergence of environmental protection and international goodwill.
Keywords	Aśoka; Mauryan Empire, medicinal plants, sustainability, biodiversity, forestry, ethnobotany, vṛikṣāyurveda, Arthaśāstra, Ayurveda, conservation, sacred groves, foreign policy, plant diplomacy, environmental history, Dhamma, vrikshamahamatra, survabhutahitha, medical centres, dharmavijaya, sacred grooves, pharmacology
Field	Biology > Agriculture / Botany
Published In	Volume 17, Issue 8, August 2026
Published On	2026-08-29
DOI	https://doi.org/10.71097/IJTAS.v17.i8.1404

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King Aśoka and Medicinal Plants: Sustainability, Biodiversity, Forestry, Ethnobotany, State welfare and the Plant Foreign Diplomacy of the Mauryan Empire

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