Wytze Keuning

Wytze or Wietse Keuning (21 December 1876, Tolbert - 18 December 1957, Groningen) was a Dutch school teacher and author, who wrote a 3-volume fictionalized biography of Ashoka the Great.

Keuning was born in nl:Tolbert in the community of Leek, Groningen to Klaas Jurjens Keuning, a house painter and later bar owner, and Grietje Wijtzes van der Velde. Keuning became a school teacher and in August 1904 he married Martje Vermeulen from his hometown. The couple had one son (Klaas) in 1906, but divorced in February 1914. In 1915 he remarried Frouwiena Abresch in Groningen, with whom he had another son (Frits). Keuning became headmaster of a school in Groningen as well as editor of the newspaper nl:Nieuwsblad van het Noorden. Keuning had an interest in Buddhism and Eastern philosophy and in 1937 retired early from his job as headmaster to focus on Ashoka, who had only been confirmed to be non-mythical in 1915. In his research, he might have benefitted from his proximity to the University of Groningen, where Sanskrit had been taught since 1881.

He published his magnum opus in 3 volumes between 1937-1947, which overlapped the 5-year-long occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany. In an interview late in his life, Keuning said that he was "intrigued by times of change in history", comparing the time in the Netherlands during his writing and Ashoka 's time in the Indian subcontinent. Keuning died of a stroke in 1957 at the age of nearly 81.

In the mid 1990s J. Elizabeth Steur translated the trilogy into English as a single volume. The titles of the three books as written in the combined volume are The Wild Prince, The Wise Ruler and The World's Greatest Teacher.