Kalinga War
Ashoka invaded Kalinga around 261 BC, won, and then recorded his own remorse on rock faces across his empire. Kalinga was the coastal region of modern Odisha, a prosperous and independent state with a substantial maritime trade that sat between the Mauryan heartland and the routes south. Ashoka's grandfather Chandragupta had left it untaken. The war is known almost entirely from his own account. Rock Edict XIII records that 150,000 were deported, 100,000 killed in the fighting and many times that number died afterwards — figures that are royal arithmetic rather than a census, and that were not the kind of thing kings normally published. What the edict then says is without parallel in the ancient world. It states that the Beloved of the Gods feels profound sorrow and regret for the conquest, that the slaughter, death and deportation of a people is grievous, and that he considers the greatest of all victories to be the victory of righteousness. It expresses concern for the Brahmins and householders caught up in it, and says that even a hundredth or a thousandth part of that suffering would now weigh on him. The same edict is omitted from the two versions carved in Kalinga itself. He turned to Buddhism, sent missions as far as Sri Lanka and the Hellenistic kingdoms, built stupas, endowed hospitals for people and animals, and abandoned wars of conquest. The Lion Capital of one of his pillars is India's state emblem. His empire fragmented within fifty years of his death. The edicts were unreadable for a millennium until James Prinsep deciphered Brahmi in 1837, and Ashoka was recovered as a figure only then.
- Year: 261 BCE
- Category: Military
