Introduction
Kunala was a son of Ashoka, the central figure of one of the most dramatic episodes in the Buddhist legendary tradition surrounding his father's reign.
Family
- Father: Ashoka
- Children: Samprati
- Siblings: Dasharatha Maurya, Mahendra, Sanghamitra, Tivara
Blindness and Restoration
According to the Ashokavadana, Kunala was blinded through the scheming of queen Tishyaraksha while Ashoka was ill, after which he traveled as a wandering musician, his true identity unknown, until he was eventually recognized. Legendary tradition holds Kunala was later restored to favor and that his son Samprati eventually inherited the Maurya throne, though the precise succession after Ashoka's death is not uniformly agreed upon across the surviving sources, some of which place different figures in the immediate line of succession.
This article records the Maurya Empire (c. 4th-2nd century BCE) as historical genealogy reconstructed from Ashoka's own rock and pillar edicts, Greek and Latin accounts of contact with the Mauryas, and later Buddhist, Jain and Puranic traditions composed well after the events they describe; where these traditions genuinely disagree, that disagreement is noted rather than resolved into invented certainty.