Introduction
Samprati was a grandson of Ashoka through his son Kunala, venerated especially strongly in Jain tradition for his extensive patronage and temple-building on behalf of Jainism.
Family
- Father: Kunala
A Second Ashoka for Jainism
Jain textual tradition credits Samprati with sponsoring the construction of a vast number of Jain temples and actively promoting Jainism across his domains, a religious patronage program substantial enough that some later Jain sources describe him in terms that deliberately echo Ashoka's own famous embrace and promotion of Buddhism a generation or two earlier — earning him the informal characterization of a "second Ashoka," specifically for the Jain tradition rather than in the broader historical record, where his reign is much less independently documented outside Jain sources.
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.