Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/212

 174 ASOKA MAURYA AND HJS SUCCESSORS words. The edicts are written in a style far too peculiar and distinctive to be the work of a secretary of state, and are alive with personal feeling. No secretary would have dared to put into his master's mouth the passion- ate expressions of remorse for the misery caused by the Kalinga war, leading up to the resolve to eschew aggressive warfare for the rest of his life, and the declaration that " although a man do him an injury, his Majesty holds that it must be patiently borne, as far as it possibly can be borne." The edicts reveal Asoka as a man who sought to combine the piety of the monk with the wisdom of the king, and to make India the kingdom of righteousness as he conceived it, a theocracy without a God, in which the government should act the part of Providence, and guide the people in the right way. Every man, he maintained, must work out his own salvation, and eat the fruit of his deeds. " The fruit of exertion is not to be obtained by the great man only, because even the small man by exertion can win lor himself much heavenly bliss; and for this purpose was given the precept l Let small and great exert themselves.' There could be no progress without individual effort; the government could point out the road, but each man must travel it for himself. Reverence, compassion, truthfulness, and sympathy were the virtues which he inculcated; irreverence, cru- elty, falsehood, and intolerance were the vices which he condemned. The preacher was no mere sermon- writer. He was a man of affairs, versed in the arts of