Journeva
In about 261 BC an Indian king won a war, counted the dead and stopped, and a line in a very old Buddhist book says what he had understood.
It is about 261 BC in India. Ashoka is a king. He wins a big war. Many people die.
Ashoka is not happy. He is very sorry. He wants no more war.
Now he digs wells and plants trees along the roads. There is medicine for people and for animals.
Hate does not stop hate. Love stops it. An old Buddhist book, the Dhammapada, says: "hatred ceases by love". The book says this is "an old rule".
Every Journeva story exists at four levels — same plot, same characters, richer language each step. Here is how this one begins at each level.
In the app you can tap any word for its meaning, listen to the story read aloud with the words lighting up, and save words to practise later. Ten stories are free at every level, and every story is free at A1.
Get Journeva on the App StoreRead it in a language you already know to check your understanding — every Journeva story is written in all five.
A physics student in London starts a doctorate in 1970, his band gets in the way for thirty-seven years, and Plato explains why the guitar was never a detour.
A small lie on Tuesday, three bad nights, and a two-thousand-year-old verse in a waiting room that explains exactly what a tree does to itself.
The train is forty minutes late and Daniel can feel the day turning bad in his head; the first verse of a very old book has something to say about that.