your bridge home
Saints and Poets
Ashoka had the strongest army in the world. What he sent to Sri Lanka was his son, then his daughter, and a cutting from a tree.
Ashoka had conquered Kalinga and been sickened by it. He commanded the largest army in the world.
What he sent to Sri Lanka was his son, and then his daughter, and a cutting from a tree.
Mahinda was Ashoka's son by his first wife Devi, and he had become a monk.
He went to Sri Lanka in the middle of the third century BCE, and the account of his arrival is one of the best-known scenes in Sri Lankan tradition.
King Devanampiya Tissa was out hunting deer on the hill of Mihintale, and Mahinda appeared to him there.
And before he taught the king anything, he examined him.
He pointed at a mango tree and asked what it was. A mango. Are there other mangoes besides this one? Yes, many. And besides this mango and those other mangoes, are there other trees? Yes. And besides those trees and this mango, are there any trees at all?
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.