Tribes in Ancient India c50.139

c50.139

During the first thirteen years of his reign, Aśoka appears to have followed the traditional Maurya policy of expansion within India and of friendly co-operation with foreign powers. In the thirteenth year of his reign, he conquered the kingdom of the Three Kaliṅgas or Kaliṅga, and annexed it to its empire. The annexation of Kaliṅga, like that of Aṅga by Bimbisāra, was a great landmark in the history of Magadha and of India. But the unavoidably heavy loss of life and property involved in the conquest of Kaliṅga made a deep impression on Aśoka and awakened in him feelings of profound compunction and sorrow. About this time he appears to have come under the influence of Buddhist teachers. This opened a new era—an era of peace and kindness to all animate beings, of social progress, of religious propaganda, and it marked the close of a career of conquest and aggression. ‘The martial spirit of Magadha began to die out for want of exercise.’ Thus came to an end the era of political ‘digvijaya’ begun by his mighty grandfather, giving place to the sacred ‘era of Dhammavijaya’ or conquest by the spiritual force of non-violence. Aśoka’s change of religion after the Kaliṅga war resulted in a change of the monarch’s internal as well as foreign policy. He maintained friendly relations with the S. Indian and Hellenistic powers. He renounced once for all the old policy of violence, of conquering peoples, suppressing revolt by force and annexing territory. In Edict IV he says with a spirit of exultation: ‘the reverberation of the war drums (Bherīghoṣo) has become the reverberation of the Law (Dhammaghoṣo)’. He called upon his future successors—sons and grandsons—to shun new conquests. This change of policy darkened the political horizon of the Magadhan empire in its heyday. Magadha which, before Bimbisāra was merely a tiny State in South Bihar, had, during the interval from the time of Bimbisāra to the Kaliṅga war of Aśoka, expanded to a gigantic empire from the foot of the Hindu Kush to the borders of the Tamil country. After the Kaliṅga war, the political destiny of Magadha was reversed. The empire gradually became smaller and smaller till it sank to its pre-Bimbisarian area and position.