The King Who Repented and Kept the Sword
Ashoka's edicts confess to the horror of Kalinga, and in the same breath warn the forest peoples of his power. The tension between a state's conscience and its coercion has never been resolved, in his empire or in the Republic that adopted his symbols.
Rock Edict XIII of the emperor Ashoka, preserved in several versions across the subcontinent, records that in the eighth year after his coronation he conquered Kalinga, and that the war left one hundred and fifty thousand people deported, one hundred thousand killed and many times that number dead from other causes. Historians treat these figures as rhetoric rather than a census, but the text leaves no doubt about its purpose. It is a public statement, cut into stone for passers by, that a ruler has looked at what he did and found it painful.
The edict goes on to express sorrow and repentance. Ashoka, who styles himself Beloved of the Gods, declares that the true conquest is conquest by dhamma, a word that covers righteous conduct, tolerance and care for the welfare of subjects. For two thousand years the story has been read as the moment a warrior became a saint, and modern India has built the story into its public symbols. The wheel of dhamma stands at the centre of the national flag, and the lion capital found at Sarnath serves as the emblem of the Republic. The state that was born in 1947 chose to see itself as an heir to a king who admitted remorse.
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