Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/188

186, and relatives of those who are themselves well protected, while their affection [for those injured] continues undiminished. Thus for them also that is a mode of violence, and the share of this distributed among all men is a matter of regret to His Sacred Majesty, because it never is the case that faith in some one denomination or another does not exist.

So that of all the people who were then slain, done to death, or carried away captive in Kalinga, if the hundredth part or the thousandth part were now to suffer the same fate, it would be matter of regret to His Sacraed Majesty. Moreover,should anyone do him wrong, that too must be borne with by His Sacred Majesty, so far as it can possibly be borne with. Evcn upon the forest folk in his dominions, His Sacred Majest looks kindly, and he seeks to make them think. [aright] for [otherwise] repentance would eome upon His Sacred Majesty. They are hidden to turn from their [evil] ways that they be not ehastised. Because His Sacred Majesty desires for all animate beings security, self—contro1, peace of mind, and joyousness.

And this the chiefest conquest in the opinion of His Sacred Majesty, that conquest of the Law of Piety, which, again, has been won by His Sacred Majesty both here [in his own doininions] and among all his neighbours as far as six hundred leagues, where the king of the Greeks named Antiochos dwells, and to the north of that Antiochos [where dwell] the four (4) kings named severally Ptolemy, Antigonos, Magas, and Alexander——[likewise] in the south, the Cholas and Pâṇḍyas as far as the Tamraparni [rive1']—and here, too, in the King’s dominions——among the Greeks, Kâmbojas, the Nâbhapantis of Nâbhaka; among the Bhojas, Pitinikas, Andhras, and Pulindas—everywhere they follow the instruction of His Sacred Majesty in the Law of Piety.

Even where the envoys of His Sacred Majesty do not penetrate, these people, too, hearing His Sacred