Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c15.s1.t2.1

c15.s1.t2.1

The effect of the change of religion was at once felt in foreign policy. The Emperor declared that "of all the people who were slain, done to death, or carried away captive in Kaliṅga, if the hundredth part or the thousandth part were now to suffer the same fate, it would be a matter of regret to His Sacred Majesty. Moreover, should any one do him wrong, that too must be borne with by His Sacred Majesty, so far as it can possibly be borne with." In Kaliṅga Edict I, the Emperor expressed his desire that the unsubdued peoples in the frontiers of the imperial dominions (*Aṃtā avijitā*) "should not be afraid of him, that they should trust him, and should receive from him happiness not sorrow." The chiefest conquest in the Emperor’s opinion was the conquest by righteousness (*Dhamma-vijaya*). In Edict IV he exultingly says, “the reverberation of the kettle-drums (*Bherīghoṣo*) has become the reverberation of the Law of Piety (*Dhammaghoṣo*).” Not content with what he himself did he called upon his sons and even his great grandsons to eschew new conquests—*putra papotra me asu navam vijayam ma vijetaviyam*. Here we have a complete renunciation of the old policy of military conquest or *Digvijaya* and the enunciation of a new policy, viz., that of *Dhammavijaya*.¹ The full political effects of this change of policy became manifest only after the death of Aśoka, *perhaps even after the 27th year of his consecration*. From the time of Bimbisāra to the Kaliṅga war the history of India was the story of the expansion of Magadha from a tiny state in South Bihār to a gigantic Empire extending from the foot of the Hindukush to the borders of the Tamil country. After the Kaliṅga war ensued a period of stagnation at the end of which the process is reversed. The empire gradually dwindled down in extent till it sank to the position from which Bimbisāra and his successors had raised it.