I've seen a lot of sources claiming that Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty, the dynasty that ruled most of the Indian subcontinent in the 3rd century BC, was responsible for building some of the oldest hospitals on the Indian subcontinent. For example, see this Aeon article. However, these sources never cite their sources. When I read more scholarly works on the history of hospitals, such as Tiffany Ziegler's Medieval Healthcare and the Rise of Charitable Institutions: The History of the Municipal Hospital, I see no mentions of Ashoka in the history of hospital building. This leads me to the following question: did Ashoka really build any hospitals? If so, what is the evidence that he did, and what exactly was the nature of these hospitals? What does the primary data tell us would let us call what Ashoka built a "hospital" in an institutional sense?

I've seen a lot of sources claiming that Emperor Ashoka (c. 268 to 232 BCE) of the Mauryan dynasty, the dynasty that ruled most of the Indian subcontinent in the 3rd century BC, was responsible for building some of the oldest hospitals on the Indian subcontinent. For example, see this Aeon article. However, these sources never cite their sources. When I read more scholarly works on the history of hospitals, such as Tiffany Ziegler's Medieval Healthcare and the Rise of Charitable Institutions: The History of the Municipal Hospital, I see no mentions of Ashoka in the history of hospital building. This leads me to the following question: did Ashoka really build any hospitals? If so, what is the evidence that he did, and what exactly was the nature of these hospitals? What does the primary data tell us would let us call what Ashoka built a "hospital" in an institutional sense?