HISTORICAL SETTING:

When this adventure story begins, it is in northern India, 260 BC -- two centuries after Gautama the Buddha lived.  This is a momentous and ironic period in world history.  From Greece, Alexander The Great’s conquering army has already reached northern India.  Further to the west, the hundred year Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage are raging.  Just a few decades from now, Hannibal will make his famous invasion of the Roman Empire, in which his army crosses the Italian Alps with elephants.  In this same period, China becomes united for the first time, under the emperor Shi Huangdi.

Meanwhile, in India, the warrior-king Asoka Maurya has inherited the largest united province in the land.   By now the Buddha’s teachings have spread to all parts of India — except for Asoka’s domain.  So ironically, at this point in history, the furious King Asoka has no reason to suspect that he will soon become Buddhism’s most important patron of all time.

RELIGIOUS SETTING:

In the third century BC, the Hebrew Bible has already been written, and is being translated into Greek.  Christianity and Islam do not yet exist. In India, Jainism has just recently been founded by Vardhamana Mahavira.  Buddhism is still in its infancy, while India’s Vedic literature has already produced such sophisticated works as The Upanishads and The Bhagavad Gita, which will become the seminal holy scriptures of modern Hinduism.  But back then, that religion was based on brutal practices, including ritual live sacrifice, unlike modern Hinduism, which preaches compassion.