's grandson, the age culminated. H. P.
Blavatsky says positively that he was born into Buddhism; this
is not the general view; but one finds nothing in his edicts,
really, to contradict it. His father Bindusara, of whom we know
nothing, may have been a Buddhist. But it would appear that Asoka
in his youth was the most capable, and also the most violent and
passionate of Bindusara's sons. During his father's lifetime, he
held one of the great vice-royalties into which the empire was
divided; he succeeded to the throne in 271. His domains at that
time included all Aryavarta, with Baluchistan, and as much of
Afghanistan as lies south of the Hindoo Koosh; and how much of
the Deccan it is difficult to determine. Nine years later he
extended this realm still further, by the conquest of the
Kalingas, whose country lay along the coast northward from
Madras. At the end of that war he was master of all India north
of a line drawn from Pondicherry to Cannanore in the south;
while the tip of the Deccan and Ceylon lay at least within his
sphere of influence.

He was easily the strongest monarch of his day. In China--between
which country and India there was no communication: they had not
discovered each other, or they had lost sight of each other for
ages--an old order was breaking to pieces, and all was weakness
and decay. In the West, Greek civilization was in decadence, with
the successors of Alexander engaged in profitless squabbles.
Rome, a power only in Italy, was about to begin her long struggle
with Carthage; overseas nobody minded her. The Crest-Wave was in
India, the strongest power and most vigorous civilization, so far
as we can tell, in the world, and at the head of India stood this
Chakravartin, victorious Asoka, flushed with conquest, and a
whole world tempting him out to conquer.--

He never went to war again. For twenty-nine years after that
conquest of the Kalingas, until his death in 233, he reigned in
unbroken peace. He left his heart to posterity in many edicts and
inscriptions cut on rocks and pillars; thirty-five of these
remain, or have so far been discovered and read. In 257, or five
years after the Kalinga War, he published this:

"Devanamipiya Piadasi"--

It means literally 'the Beloved of the Gods, the Beautiful of
Countenance'; but it is really a title equivalent to "His
Gracious Majesty,' and was borne by all the Maurya kings;--

"Devanampiya Piadasi feels remorse on account of the conque