Aśoka the Righteous

Aśoka ruled the Mauryan Empire on the Indian subcontinent in the third century BCE. He was a real person – and is also a legendary figure within Buddhism. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. With things
being as they are currently, I just wanted to work

(00:21):
on something that felt, at least overall kind of positive.
And I also wanted to get a little outside of
the nine and twentieth centuries, because I had done some
things in that time span right before I went on vacation,
and then I came back from vacation to a pandemic
and did some more and it started to feel like
a lot. So I said, let's I'm gonna try to
find something totally different, and that finally led me to Ashoka,

(00:45):
who ruled the Marian Empire on the Indian subcontinent in
the third century BC, so a very different time of place.
Ashoka was a real person and also a legendary figure
within Buddhism, and for centuries, Buddhist legend and stories where
the primary source of information about his life and rule,
both within and outside of South Asia. So today we

(01:07):
are going to talk about what we know about this
man in the empire and how that story grew in
importance within Buddhism, And as just a note, a lot
of the chronology that we're talking about today is a
little bit fuzzy, as is often the case, and we're
talking about something so long ago. A lot of the
dates that are documented aren't specific calendar dates. There are

(01:28):
things like in the eighth year of Ashoka's reign um,
some years were also marked from the birth of the Buddha,
and there are different opinions on that date as well,
Like there's some religiously significant dates, and then other like
archaeological efforts to go back and like pinpoint a specific
calendar date, they don't always agree. We are not going

(01:50):
to take off every proposed date for all the things
that are going to happen, because that would be a
little confusing and kind of annoying to just have a
list of dates every time one comes up. So just know,
if you're eating up on Ashoka, you might find some
variants in the years. Ashoka's grandfather, Schandra Gupta Maria, lived
in the fourth century BC. Before that point, the Indian

(02:11):
subcontinent was home to at least sixteen kingdoms, and there
was a much larger number of tribes, sects, and sub
groups within those kingdoms. A caste system was developing, involving
a hierarchy of social classes that weren't allowed to intermarry,
although that was still in its early stages, and the
most widely practiced religions were vettis Um, which was a

(02:32):
precursor to Hinduism and Jainism. This was after the Buddha
had lived, but Buddhism wasn't as widely practiced yet. Jondra
Gupta lived in the Megada Kingdom and what's now northern India,
and when he was born, it was being ruled by
the Nanda dynasty. Chandra Gupta took part in an uprising
against that dynasty and then ultimately ascended to the throne

(02:55):
at about three b C. From there, Jondra Gupta started
insolidating his power in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent,
both through diplomacy and through military conquest. What had been
the Magda Kingdom expanded into the Marian Empire, and this
was the first time that all of this territory had
been under the control of a central imperial government. Although

(03:16):
it's not entirely clear whether all the tribes within that
territory really recognized Chondergupta's leadership after Alexander the Great died
and three three BC, Chandragupta took over the territory that
had been controlled by Alexander's representatives. Alexander died without naming
a successor. Then afterward a collection of generals and friends

(03:37):
and other powerful people known as the Diadokei went on
went to war over how to divide the kingdom. One
of these was Lucas Nigator, who tried to invade Chandragupta's
kingdom in three oh five b C. Chandragupta's forces repelled
this invasion and ultimately formed an alliance with Seleucas. So

(03:58):
Lucas is representative to Chandra Gupta's court was a manned
named mcgastones, who was also a historian. Mcgastones went on
to write a four volume history of the region known
as the Indica, which became the Greek world's primary source
of information about the Indian subcontinent. Other Greek ambassadors were
sent to the Marian court at the capital of Patalaputra

(04:20):
as well. Later on in chandra Gupta's reign, he converted
to Jainism, and about two ninety seven b C. He
relinquished the throne to his son. A Janist sage had
foretold a famine, and when Chandra Gupta wasn't able to
prevent it, he left his throne to spend the rest
of his life devoted to religious piety and in service

(04:40):
to this sage. Ultimately, he started a religious fast that
he continued until he died of starvation. Bundasara's reign isn't
as well documented as his father's, but he did continue
to expand the Marian Empire before his death. His death
led to some kind of struggle within the line of succession,
but the details on exactly was going on there are

(05:01):
pretty murky. Polygamy was normal at this point, especially among
royal families, and Bindusara definitely had multiple sons who were
jockeying for the throne, but how many half brothers there
were and what happened among them really varies based on
what accounts you're reading. In Buddhist accounts of Ashoka's life,
he's depicted as starting out very cruel and tyrannical before

(05:23):
converting to Buddhism and leading the empire according to Buddhist principles.
Several of these accounts start out by describing one of
Ashoka's past lives, when he was a boy named Jaya
who met the Buddha and then threw dust or dirt
into the Buddhist begging bowl. It was a consequence of
doing that Ashoka was then born with some kind of
a disorder that made his skin look like dried dirt.

(05:46):
He was considered to be unattractive, with a large head
and a paunchy body. There was a paper published in
the Indian Journal of Psychiatry that speculates that he may
have had neurofibromatosis type one. According to some accounts, his
father just did not want his so called ugly son
to follow him on the throne. Buddhist accounts of Ashoka's

(06:08):
ascension to the throne are unquestionably exaggerated. They describe him
as ruthlessly killing half brothers to get them out of
his way before starting his rule as a vicious leader,
torturing prisoners, executing an entire harem after someone insulted him,
and killing advisors who failed a loyalty test, and this

(06:28):
earned him the nickname Ashoka the ferocious. Secular accounts are
not nearly as dramatic, though they acknowledged that Ashoka was
not his father's oldest son or the first one in
line for the throne, but Bindassara's chosen successor. Ssushima was
tasked with dealing with an uprising, and he handled it badly.
That caused him to lose the confidence of Bindasara as advisors.

(06:52):
So either Ashoka played a part in Sushima's execution and
took his place, or Bindasara as advisors simply disregarded the
emperor's wishes and put Ashoka onto the throat instead of
his older brother. Either way, after ascending to the throne
around two seventy b c. Ashoka seems to have spent
the first few years of his rule simply solidifying his

(07:13):
political position. He built alliances and relationships among other powerful
people in his court and in the rest of the empire,
and he also tried to create an efficient and organized
political administration. Then, about eight years into his reign, once
the throne seemed secure, Ashoka decided to do what his
father and grandfather had both also done, which was to

(07:34):
try to expand the empire. The kingdom of Kalinga in
the southern part of the Indian subcontinent would give the
empire control of important ports that would allow them better
access to trade along the Indian Ocean. So Ashoka first
demanded that the Kalinga Kingdom agree to be annexed into
the Marian Empire. The kingdom refused, so Ashoka invaded. Once

(07:58):
he had conquered the Kalinga king Um, the Marian Empire
stretched across nearly the entire Indian subcontinent, from what's now
Afghanistan in the east to Pakistan in the west, including
parts of Nepal, and nearly all of India. Only the
very tip of the subcontinent remained part of the Chola dynasty.
This was the first time in history that so much

(08:19):
of the Indian subcontinent had been united as one empire. However,
as was true with his grandfather's establishment of that empire
in the first place, it's not entirely clear how much
Ashoka's influence really extended throughout all of that territory. Sometimes
you'll see maps that have like the entirety of the
subcontinent shaded in one color, saying this was all of

(08:41):
his territory. And then sometimes you'll see when that has
like more blotches in the more central areas that are
like maybe not here though according to Ashoka's account, the
war was devastating for the Kalinga kingdom. His army killed
one hundred thousand local people and removed one fifty thousand more,
And that word removed would have meant that they were
deported or enslaved, It's not entirely clear. Rather than reveling

(09:05):
in his victory, when he saw what he and his
army had done, A Shoka was distraught. He decided to
completely change the way he governed, and the words of H. G. Wells,
the outline of history published in the Expedition, was successful,
but he was disgusted by what he saw of the
cruelties and horrors of war. He declared in certain inscriptions

(09:26):
that still exist that he would no longer seek conquest
by war, but by religion, and the rest of his
life was devoted to the spreading of Buddhism throughout the world.
Um this is when he was more nicknamed Ashoka the Righteous.
And we will talk about A. Shoka's new way of
ruling and those certain inscriptions after we paused for a
little sponsor break. Sometimes. Ashoka's realization of what the war

(09:57):
had done to the Kalinga people was described as the
moment that he converted to Buddhism, But it seems that
that conversion had really happened at least a couple of
years earlier, so he didn't suddenly become Buddhist after looking
back on what he had done in this war, he
did the more fully dedicate himself to Buddhist principles. Before that,

(10:18):
he just went on Easter. Um, it would be really
reductive to try to sum up an entire religion in
a paragraph, obviously, and uh, please, I hope nobody thinks
my reference of Easter is disrespectful to Buddhism. But to
explain a Shoka's outlook, we do need to explain some terminology,
particularly dharma. The word dharma is used to describe the

(10:40):
Buddhist teachings and the knowledge contained in them, which is
also called the Buddha dharma. But dharma is also a
concept in both Buddhism and Hinduism, with different nuances in
each religion. Uh. Sometimes you will hear people try to
translate this word in a really simple way, but in
these contexts, the word dharma really doesn't have one precise

(11:00):
equivalent in English, and it's also evolved in its meaning
in the centuries since Ashoka lived. And to further complicate things,
Ashoka used the word dama with two ms instead of
d h a r M A that came from the
procrit dialect of Sanskrit. And he didn't use this word
in a way that exactly equated to the Buddhist concept

(11:23):
of dharma, but it was related. In Buddhism, dharma incorporates
concepts like duty, morality, law, and righteousness into one idea.
In one of a Shoka's edicts, he describes dama this way,
quote noble deeds of Dama and the practice of dama
consists of having kindness, generosity, truthfulness, purity, gentleness and goodness

(11:48):
increase among people. In other places, Ashoka frames this in
a paternal way, referring to his subjects as his children.
So you can see some can not exactly overlap, but
you can see some relation in these two ideas, but
they're definitely not the exact same thing. After a Shoka

(12:08):
saw the results of his conquest of Kalinga, he absolutely
devoted himself to ruling according to this idea of dama.
One of his queen's Carvaki was credited with influencing him
in this direction. One of his first acts after making
this change was to take a two hundred fifty six
day tour of his territory. A lot of folks have

(12:29):
made different interpretations of the significance of that number of days.
On this tour, he distributed wealth and delivered addresses about
his newfound dedication to Dama and what it meant for
the empire. From there, he took regular Dama tours of
the empire, which involved quote visits and gifts to brahmin's
and ascetics, visits and gifts of gold to the aged,

(12:52):
visits to people in the countryside, instructing them in Dama,
and discussing Dama with them as is suitable. Dama was
threaded all through every aspect of Ashoka's government. All of
its actions and decisions would be influenced by Dama, which
was non violent and stressed social responsibility and respect for others.

(13:12):
His ministers would be agents of Dama. He would appoint
ambassadors whose role was not just maintaining diplomatic relationships with
other nations, but also to spread the Dama. He had
special ministers whose whole duty was to spread the Dama.
He wanted disagreements among nations to be settled according to
a non violent approach through Dama, not through war. If

(13:34):
war was completely unavoidable, he wanted the belligerents to behave
in an ethical manner and for the victors to behave
in a just compassionate way towards the defeated. Ashoka's dedication
to Dama was so complete that some sources have described
him as a zealot, but he wasn't intolerant of other religions.
He does seem to hope that his subjects will become Buddhist,

(13:56):
or at least follow their own religions in a way
that was compatible Buddhism and Dama, but he also described
honoring another person's religion as an aspect of honoring one's own.
He encouraged each person to follow their own religious traditions
so long as doing so was compatible with Dama. For example,
he banned ritual animal sacrifice, which was part of the

(14:17):
Vedic tradition in the imperial capital of Pataliputra. He also
discouraged a number of rituals and ceremonies, including ones that
were performed on occasions like births, deaths, and marriages, because
he thought that a life of moral conduct and adherence
to Dama was more important than these kinds of observances. However,
he seems to have been less tolerant of diversity within Buddhism.

(14:41):
There are several accounts of his carrying out purges of
dissenting monks within Buddhist religious communities or sanga. One of
the edicts he issued is known as the Schism Edict,
and threatened to expel monks that caused dissent within their orders.
Another aspect of Ashoka's concept of dama was making sure
that in his empire were well and cared for. He

(15:03):
embarked on the expansion of the empire's public works. He
built a network of roads to foster trade and commerce,
and he had wells, public rest houses, and mango and
banion groves planted alongside them to provide shelter, water, food,
and shade. He also built irrigation systems and dams, and
ordered the cultivation of medicinal plants. He established programs to

(15:25):
help the poor and the elderly, and encourage the population
to be frugal in their personal spending but generous towards priests, ascetics,
and the poor. He established medical practices for people and
for animals, and if he discovered that people in a
particular area didn't have the medicinal herbs or other supplies
that they needed, he sent them. He had so much

(15:46):
focus on all of this that sometimes the Marian Empire
under his rule as described as the first welfare state.
He also called on judicial officers to take care to
be fair and merciful so that the people living under
their law wouldn't be imprisoned unjustly or treated harshly while imprisoned,
and he set up sort of an audit system where

(16:06):
officials known as Mohammata's would inspect the judicial system in
each city every five years to make sure it was
functioning in a just and humane way. Ashoka also approached
the royal household and his personal conduct. According to the Dama,
he greatly reduced and may have entirely eliminated the killing
of animals for meat in the royal kitchens. He made

(16:28):
donation to Buddhist sects. He did continue to have multiple
queens and a harem of concubines, something that didn't really
align with Buddhism, but it was really typical at the time.
Apart from the reduction in meat consumption in the royal household.
Ashoka also declared a lot of animals to be protected,
including parrots, ready geese, wild ducks, queen ants, wild and

(16:52):
domestic pigeons, porcupines, squirrels, deer, and quote all four footed
creatures that are neither useful nor at all. He also
declared very young animals to be protected, and goats use
and sALS that were producing milk, whether or not they
were feeding their young, and he decreed that animals could
not be castrated on specific days. Many of these acts

(17:15):
and decrees are documented in at least thirty three inscriptions
in and around what used to be the Marian Empire.
They were carved into things like boulders, rock faces, cave walls,
and quarried polished pillars. Some, based on their position, may
have been boundary markers or notifications to travelers who were
entering Marian territory. Others aren't places that had Buddhist religious

(17:38):
significance or were important cities during Ashoka's reign. Today these
inscriptions are collectively known as the Edicts of Ashoka, and
they're located around what's now India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
He could make the point that Shoka made these, he
was definitely talking about his intent and not necessarily how

(17:58):
successfully all of this was carried out. And also, if
I were making inscriptions about my work as an emperor,
I would probably make myself sound really good. Um we
just uh we. We don't have a lot of clear, impartial,
unbiased sources about Ashoka, so just keep that in mind.
Um Ashoka had all these inscriptions made in three phases.

(18:21):
The first, the minor rock edicts, were made in the
eleventh or twelfth year of his rule or roughly two BC.
The major rock edicts were in the twelfth or thirteenth
year or about two fifty seven b c E. All
of the rock edicts were the ones that were carved
into things like boulders and cliff faces and cave walls.
Then the third phase of all this, the pillar edicts.

(18:44):
Those were created starting in the twenty sixth year of
his rule or about two forty three b C. The
quarried pillars measured about forty ft tall, and then some
were topped with a statue of an animal like a
lion or an elephant or a bowl. Today, the official
emblem of India is a rendition of the lion capital
of Ashoka, which is the capital of Ashoka's pillar in Sarnath,

(19:06):
and that's where the Buddha taught for the first time.
In addition to what we have just talked about, some
of the edicts include Ashoka's thoughts on the war we
mentioned earlier with Kalinga, including his deep remorse for having
conquered another kingdom. He describes feeling pain over the scale
of the killing involved, but also states that he would
feel the same pain if the death toll had been

(19:28):
one or one thousand that amount. The text of all
these edicts appears to be in Ashoka's own words, rather
than filtered through some kind of formal stylized imperial pronouncement,
and they seem to have been intended for ordinary citizens
of the empire to read. In most places, the text
is written in the Eastern or Western Pocrit dialect, whichever

(19:50):
was actually spoken by the people living there, rather than
using the more academic language of formal Sanskrit. They are
written in a script called Brahmy, which star it to
be used approximately during Ashoka's reign. Sometimes it's even described
as a script that he ordered to have created to
help make his administrative state more efficient. It's not completely

(20:11):
clear where the script originated, though, and the empire's farthest
western reaches, where people were more likely to speak Greek
or Aramaic, the edicts were instead written in those languages
using another script called Karashti. These inscriptions have become a
major source of information about Ashoka and his empire, but

(20:31):
after his death, knowledge of how to read them was lost.
We will talk about Ashoka's last year and how the
edicts were lost and then redeciphered after we first have
a sponsor break. Ashoka's adherence to Buddhism and his focus

(20:53):
on Dama seemed to have increased throughout his lifetime. He
went on pilgrimages to various sites that were associated with
the life of the Buddha, including the Buddhist birthplace and
the tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. And his
last year's Ashoka started making more and more donations to
monasteries and other religious communities out of the imperial treasury,

(21:15):
until his advisers cut off his access to it out
of fear that he would drain it completely. At that point,
he started donating his personal fortune. I like that they
took away his check book Um. Ashoka became ill towards
the end of his life. In the Buddhist legends that
evolved after his death, he continued to give away his
personal wealth until all he had left was half a

(21:36):
piece of fruit. He gave that last piece to the
monk that was caring for him on his deathbed. Ashoka
died in about two thirty two b c e. Having
ruled the Marian Empire for almost forty years. The empire
itself lasted only another fifty years approximately after that, and
during that time it had six more emperors. The Indian

(21:57):
subcontinent is huge, and there was and is a lot
of diversity among its people's and sects. Most of these,
you know, kingdoms and sects and people's had only been
considered part of one empire for less than a century
when Shoka died. So it seems that his successors just
didn't have the skill or charisma to hold the empire together.

(22:19):
Sometimes you'll also read arguments that all of this charitable
work and good that he was trying to do just
made things impossible for his successors to continue after he
had died. Yeah, they're probably a little short on resources. Yeah. Um.
One ongoing topic of discussion about Ashoka today is whether
to describe him as a Buddhist king or emperor. In general,

(22:42):
Buddhism is a religion that focuses on the individual. The
Buddhist enlightenment related to the idea that suffering exists, and
it exists for everyone, and each person can end their
own suffering through the eightfold Path. So these eight elements
are translated in various ways, with one of the trans
aations being right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action,

(23:04):
right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. So,
according to Buddhism, if each person follows the eightfold path,
the whole of humanity can be released from suffering. But
every person's release comes from that person's own pursuit of
the path, not someone else's. Like I can do everything
in my power to bring enlightenment to Holly, but that's

(23:27):
Holly's work. Like it is not something that can be
bestowed on one person by another. Right, I just want
the magic treat to sit under. I know it's not magic. Um.
In Ashoka's edicts, he described himself as a lay Buddhist,
but much of his governance of the Marian Empire was
outwardly focused on taking actions as emperor to relieve the

(23:50):
suffering of others. He doesn't refer to philosophical Buddhist ideas
in his edicts, but to moral, compassionate and ethical actions
and behavior, so it's not as clear whether he thought
his rule as emperor was a Buddhist act or an
expression of his Buddhism. He describes himself as Buddhist, but
he doesn't describe his empire or his rule as Buddhist. However,

(24:13):
as the Buddhist religion grew in the years after A.
Shoka's death, various people and sex claimed Ashoka and his
leadership as their own. Buddhism grew and expanded through the
Indian subcontinent and beyond, and for a time it became
the most widely practiced religion in what's now India. Ashoka
became a really legendary figure within that tradition, with stories

(24:35):
that exaggerated his early cruelty to make that conversion to
Buddhism and subsequent behavior more compelling and dramatic. He was
interpreted as a Buddhist emperor and even credited with the
growth and the spread of Buddhism as a religion. Some
even went so far as to credit Ashoka with the
Third Buddhist Council, which was convened at his capital around

(24:57):
two forty seven b C. The Thirduddhist Council discussed matters
of doctrine and dispatched missionaries to establish new Buddhist communities,
and it played a direct part in the expansion of
Buddhism in South Asia and beyond. But it was convened
independently from Ashoka and it was not something that he controlled.
Over time, mcgastones Indica was lost, although fragments of it

(25:20):
are included in other Greek writer's work, so we have
basically quotes from it, but not the entire four volumes.
Knowledge of how to read the inscriptions on the Edicts
of Ashoka was lost as well, and some of that
loss was intentional. Later rulers defaced the carvings or added
their own names, something we've talked about with other long

(25:41):
ago historical rulers. And about the fifth century CE, Hinduism
replaced Buddhism as the major religion on the Indian subcontinent,
and some Hindu religious leaders intentionally worked to try to
erase Ashoka and his Buddhist influence. From history. Eventually, the
only remaining sources of in formation on Ashoka where Buddhist

(26:01):
legends written in Sanskrit, Polly, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and
other Asian languages. The two longest and most detailed sources
are the Ashoka Vedanna from the Divya Vedonna, which was
written in Northwest India in Sanskrit approximately two hundred CE,
and the Mahavamsa, which is an epic poem written in

(26:23):
Sri Lanka in the fifth century CE in the Poli language.
So obviously a lot of time had passed between his
life and when those were penned. In a very general sense,
these two accounts reflect two different Buddhist perspectives, with the
Ashokavdonna being more reflective of Mahayana Buddhism and the Mahavamsa

(26:44):
being more reflective of Theravada Buddhism. Both of these are
definitely Buddhist works of literature, though, and their accounts of
Ashoka's life and reign are unquestionably influenced by Buddhism as
a religion and by Buddhist literary conventions. In a sin
to the basic chronology of Ashoka's life that we have
already discussed. Buddhist accounts include stories that are more like parables,

(27:07):
illustrating Ashoka as a Buddhist leader. In one, for example,
Ashoka orders the construction of eighty four thousand stupas, which
are dome or mound like structures containing relics. He did
this all within a day, with the sun pausing to
let him finish, something that is usually interpreted as having
been a solar eclipse. One of the books that I

(27:28):
read as um a source for this episode, went through
when all the solar eclipses occurred during his reign to
try to reference when building of stupas may have happened. Um,
there's been a lot of effort to try to make
it like a clear and accurate chronology anyway. Uh. These
legends and poems became nearly the only source of information

(27:51):
about Ashoka from sometime a few centuries after he lived
until the nineteenth century English antiquarian and orientalist James Prince
that became the first European scholar to decipher the Brahmi
Script in eighteen thirty seven. He had become interested in
the script after a fragment of one of Ashoka's Pillar
Edicts was unearthed, and he wanted to try to preserve

(28:12):
this language, but it took a while for people to
connect the newly deciphered text back to Ashoka. Most of
the inscriptions used the name Devanampriya or Beloved of the Gods,
rather than Ashoka's actual name, so at first Prince epp
attributed them to Devanampia Tissa of Sri Lanka, and there
is still some debate about whether all of the inscriptions

(28:34):
should be traced back to Ashoka. Another scholar, George Tumor,
made the connection between Prince EPs work and Ashoka in
the nineteenth century. This, of course led to an effort
to figure out number one, what all of the pillars
said UH, and then to figure out the truth behind
the legendary accounts of Ashoka, which had become more widely
known at the time. The pillars also included a lot

(28:56):
more dates than the more legendary accounts of Ashoka's life,
and then that leads you a lot of efforts to
piece together a more specific timeline of Ashoka's reign and
the empire as a whole. UH. The Western look at
all of this text also sparked a lot of interest
in the text itself, and at this point the edicts
texts has been studied a lot more thoroughly than the

(29:19):
archaeological context of the inscriptions themselves. Will end with something H. G.
Wells wrote about Ashoka in The Outline of History, which
was published in nine quote, for eight and twenty years,
Ashoka worked sanely for the real needs of men. Amidst
the tens of thousands of names of monarchs that crowd
the columns of history, their majesties and graciousnesses and serenities

(29:43):
and royal highnesses and the like. The name of Ashoka
shines and shines almost alone a star, from the Volga
to Japan. His name is still honored China, Tibet, and
even India, though it has left his doctrine preserved the
tradition of his greatness. More living men cherish his memory
today than have ever heard the names of Constantine or Charlemagne.

(30:07):
Obviously as a very Western approach to Ashoka, but I
loved that quote anyway, I wanted to include it. I
found reading about all of Ashoka's um at least intent
to do good deeds and good works to just be
very comforting in the time of pandemic chaos that we
are currently living through. Uh So, I am glad that

(30:29):
was where I ultimately arrived when trying to figure out
what to research today. Yeah, do you have a bit
of listener mail? I do. It's also a pretty optimistic
listener mail. It is from Claire. Claire wrote in after
the render Pest episode and says, Hi, Holly and Tracy
just finished the render pest episode. Always good to remember
what humanity is capable of when we worked together. You
didn't mention, so I don't know if it came up

(30:50):
in your research, but one of the knock on effects
of eliminating render Pest was the restoration of the Serengetti
wildebeest and water buffalo, arkisto and species. In the fifties,
the wilde beest population in the Serengetti Park was seven
hundred thousand. By the eighties, it's sword to one point
five million. Here's a link outlining how this improved the

(31:11):
ecology of the park. If you want a gorgeous nature
documentary while staying at home, the Serengetti Rules covers this
with gorgeous footage to boot. I think now more than
ever it helps to remember the words of James Earl Jones.
We're all connected in the great circle of life. Keep
up the good work and stay safe and healthy. Claire,
thank you Claire Um for this email. UM. I had

(31:32):
read a tiny bit about what happened in various African
ecosystems after render pest was eliminated, but I also needed
to finish writing the episodes that we could record it, UM,
which I know happens to the both of us at times. UM.
The when it gets to the point was like, we

(31:53):
gotta say this is done. So thank you so much
for giving me the It's Claire to say something about
it on the show. If you'd like to write to
us about this or anyother podcast or a history podcast
that I heart radio dot com. And then we're all
over social media at mist in History. That's where you'll
find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram, and you can
subscribe to our show on Apple, podcast, the I heart

(32:15):
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