Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s24.3

c11.s24.3

In truth, the conversion of Aśoka is connected with the first historical event of the reign of which the inscriptions speak, the conquest of Kalinga, and this is given out by Aśoka himself in the thirteenth Rock Edict. He says that he effected the conquest of Kalinga eight years after his anointment; he deplores the slaughter, death and deportation of people involved in the conquest of an unconquered country, and affirms that 150,000 men were deported, 100,000 were slain in battle, and many times that number died; he lays stress on the injury to the beloved ones of the virtuous Brāhmaṇas and Śramaṇas; out of repentance (*anuśochana*) for these evils of conquest, he began to study Dhamma with zeal, to love Dhamma and to devote himself to the instruction of people in Dhamma. The stages of Aśoka's spiritual progress we may infer from the hints scattered in other inscriptions¹. In the opening sections of the Minor Rock Inscription he says that for over a year after he had openly proclaimed himself a Buddha-Śākya (Maski) he was not very zealous ; then he visited the Sangha and by the time he issued this inscription he had been exerting himself with zeal for over a year in the realisation of Dhamma. The total period between the original conversion and this record is given as two years and a half. The visit to Sambodhi at the end of ten years after the *abhisheka* (eighth Rock Edict) may well have signalised the initial conversion of the emperor to Buddhism.