Introduction
Mahendra, also known as Mahinda, was a son of Ashoka who, according to Sri Lankan chronicle tradition, led the Buddhist mission credited with formally introducing Buddhism to Sri Lanka.
Family
- Father: Ashoka
- Mother: Devi (queen)
- Siblings: Dasharatha Maurya, Kunala, Sanghamitra, Tivara
Founder of Sri Lankan Buddhism
The Mahavamsa recounts Mahendra's mission to the Sri Lankan king Devanampiya Tissa in considerable narrative detail, presenting it as the foundational event of Sri Lankan Buddhist history and establishing a religious and cultural connection between the island and the Indian subcontinent that has persisted for over two millennia. His sister Sanghamitra's later mission, bringing a sapling of the original Bodhi tree, is presented in the same tradition as completing and further consolidating his foundational work.
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.