Kalinga War
Around 261 BCE the Mauryan emperor Ashoka conquered the independent kingdom of Kalinga on India's eastern coast. By his own rock edicts the campaign killed some 100,000 and deported around 150,000, an extremity of violence that he publicly professed to regret. The conquest completed Mauryan control of the subcontinent's core but also triggered one of history's best-documented policy pivots: Ashoka's turn from dhigvijaya (conquest by force) to dhammavijaya (conquest by righteousness), his patronage of Buddhism, and a programme of welfare works and missionary outreach. The structural tension this opened — a Buddhist ethical state still resting on a conquest-built administrative apparatus — would shape the dynasty's later trajectory.
- Year: 261 BCE
- Category: Military
