What the inscriptions show
In his own words, Ashoka went on pilgrimage to Sambodhi, the place of the Buddha's awakening, and to Lumbinī, where he raised a pillar. He enlarged the stupa of a past Buddha, Konakamana. He also gave caves in the Barabar hills to the Ājīvikas, a rival movement, which shows that his generosity was not only for Buddhists.
Monuments such as the Great Stupa at Sanchi are believed to have begun in his reign, and his polished pillars stood at Buddhist sites across the north.
The 84,000 stupas
Later legend went much further. The Aśokāvadāna tells that Ashoka opened the stupas holding the Buddha's relics and redistributed them into 84,000 new stupas throughout his realm, all consecrated in a single moment.
The Third Council and the missions
The Sri Lankan chronicles add that Ashoka supported a Third Council at Pāṭaliputra, led by the elder Moggaliputta Tissa, to purify the community of false monks. Afterwards, they say, monks were sent to nine regions, from Kashmir and Gandhāra to Suvaṇṇabhūmi and to Laṅkā, where Ashoka's own son Mahinda went.
Some support for the mission story comes from relic caskets found at Sanchi and nearby sites, inscribed with the names of monks that match names in the chronicles, including one called 'teacher of all the Himalaya'.
Why it matters
It shows how royal support could establish Buddhist institutions, and how later tradition turned Ashoka into the model of a Buddhist king.
History and tradition
What historians can say
Ashoka's patronage of Buddhist sites is well supported by his inscriptions and by archaeology. The Third Council is known only from the Theravāda tradition, and the numbers and wonders of the relic legend are not historical.
What Buddhist tradition remembers
The Pāli tradition says that at the Second Council the elders foresaw that, more than a century later, a great king named Dhammāsoka would arise and the community would be troubled. They asked a Brahmā god, Tissa, to be reborn on earth to guide it. He was born as Moggaliputta Tissa, the wise elder who later advised Ashoka and led the Third Council.