Buddhist India c19.27

c19.27

Of the events of the first few years after Asoka's reign we have no information. In the ninth year a war broke out between Magadha and Kalinga, perhaps the then most powerful kingdom in India still independent of the empire ruled over by Asoka. Of the rights and wrongs of the dispute we cannot judge. Our sole information comes from one side only, and is an incidental reference in the thirteenth Edict, published by Asoka five years afterwards. In that document the King states that it was the remorse and pity aroused in his mind by the horrors of the conquest—the killing, death by disease, and forcible carrying away of individuals, to which non-combatants and even peaceable brahmins and recluses were exposed—that resulted in his conversion. He does not say to what. That, apparently, was supposed to be quite clear to any one. It was sufficient to say that he had come to the opinion that the only true conquest was conquest by the religion (by the Dhamma).