Ashoka was - along with  the monotheist pharaoh Akhenaten (our 114th great-grandfather), the most amazing king in world history. He was the first to unite India, but after realizing the horrors of war, he became a pacifist. He founded the Indian tradition for vegetarianism and founded animal hospitals in order also to protect the animals, became the world's first feminist by establishing a network of schools and universities for women and tried as a budhist monk to spread the ideas of peace and harmony. He was naturally the inspiration for Mahatma Gandhi and when Nehru 2,100 years later was imprisoned for his struggle to create a new united and free India, in his prison letters to his 14-year old daughter, Indira Gandi, Nehru put Ashoka on an equal footing with Jesus as his great inspiration for his non-violent struggle against the British.