Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/28

26 reason to believe that after the subjugation of the Kalingas Asoka ever again waged an aggressive war. His officers, the Wardens of the Marches mentioned in the edicts, may or may not have been compelled at times to defend portions of his extended frontiers against the incursions of enemies, but all that we know of his life indicates that once he had begun to devote himself to the love, protection, and teaching of the Law of Piety, or dharma, he never again allowed himself to be tempted by ambition into an unprovoked war. It is possible that the Kalinga conflict may not have been his first, but certainly it was his last war undertaken voluntarily.

The full meaning of the statement that the king's love for and protection of the Law of Piety and his teaching of that Law began directly after the annexation of Kalinga is brought out by comparison with another document (Minor Rock Edict I) published a few months earlier than the edict describing the annexation. In the earlier document, three copies of which are addressed to officers in the South through the Prince at Suvarnagiri, who apparently was the Southern Viceroy, and four to other officials, Asoka explains that for more than two years and a half he had been a lay disciple, without exerting himself strenuously, but that for more than a year prior to the publication of the edict he had become a member of the Buddhist Order of monks (saṁgha) and had devoted himself with the utmost energy to the winning of immense heavenly bliss for his people by his