Previous Year Question

Ashoka's Major Rock Edict XIII is the most important epigraphic source providing information about the Kalinga War and its consequences. In this edict, Ashoka himself refers to the conquest of Kalinga, the extensive human losses caused by the war and the remorse that followed.

According to the edict, Kalinga was conquered eight years after Ashoka's coronation. During this conquest, approximately 150,000 people were deported, 100,000 were killed, and many times that number died from other consequences. Such extensive human suffering caused Ashoka deep remorse.

Ashoka particularly expressed grief that war affected not merely soldiers but also Brahmanas, Shramanas, householders and ordinary families, who suffered death, violence, displacement and separation from their loved ones.

After the Kalinga War, Ashoka expressed a policy of giving greater importance to Dhamma-Vijaya, or conquest through Dhamma, rather than military conquest. He also advised his future successors to avoid new military conquests and, where conquest became necessary, to keep punishment and violence as limited as possible.

The Rummindei Pillar Inscription is associated with Lumbini as the birthplace of the Buddha and Ashoka's visit there. Minor Rock Edict I provides information about Ashoka's personal religious inclination and his association with the Buddhist Sangha. Hiuen Tsang visited India several centuries after Ashoka. Therefore, none of these is the principal contemporary epigraphic account of the Kalinga War.