Buddhism has affected many people. At one time, one third of the world was Buddhist at one point. Here are three people, whom the Buddha has affected deeply.
             Ashoka was the Emperor of India in the 3rd century BCE, 200 years after the Buddha. He was cruel & ambitious. He was fighting. After the battle, Ashoka realised that he had caused suffering, because of his greed. So he decided to give up his old ways & devote the rest of his life to helping other beings. He built hospitals for both humans & animals & rest houses. He planted trees along the roads of his kingdom to provide shade for travellers. He also carved the Buddha's teaching onto rocks & pillars all over his kingdom. He passed laws to forbid the killing or wounding of animals. He sent teachers to other kingdoms to tell people about the Buddha's Dharma. He gave up his fancy clothes & jewels & began to wear simple robes. He travelled on pilgrimage to all the important places in the Buddha's life, including Lumbini (the Buddha's birth-place), Bodhgaya (the place of Enlightenment) & Sarnath (the place of the first teaching). In these places, he built stone pillars & stupas. He was very tolerant of other religions & let people of any faith live in his kingdom.
             Dr B. R. Ambedkar was born into an untouchable family, but later became a barrister & an Indian Cabinet Minister, the first Law Minister of independent India and the chief architect of her Constitution. He was born in 1891. He was the leader of the ex-untouchables. He wanted democracy & to free the ex-untouchables. After much research into the doctrines and histories of the world's major religions, Ambedkar concluded that Buddhism was precisely the 'religion of Principles' that his people needed. He converted to Buddhism with 400, 000 of his followers in October 1956. Dr Ambedkar was considered a phenomenon especially by his followe
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