everything. He built splendid cities, and strewed the land with
wonderful buildings and monoliths. Patna, the capital, in
Megasthenes' time nine miles long by one and a half wide, and
built of wood, he rebuilt in stone with walls intricately
sculptured. Education was very widespread or universal. His
edicts are sermons preached to the masses: simple ethical
teachings touching on all points necessary to right living.
He had them carved on rock, and set them up by the roadsides
and in all much-frequented places, where the masses could
read them; and this proves that the masses could read. They
are all vibrant with his tender care, not alone for his human
subjects, but for all sentient beings. "Work I must.... that
I may discharge my debt to all things animate." And how he
did work without one private moment in the day or night, as his
decrees show, in which he should be undisturbed by the calls of
those who needed help. He specifies; he particularizes; there
was no moment to be considered private, or his personal own.

And even then he was not content. There were foreign lands; and
those, too, were entitled to his care. I said that the southern
tip of India, with Ceylon, were within his sphere of influence:
his sphere of influence was much wider than that, however. Saying
that a king's sphere of influence is wherever he can get his will
done, Asoka's extended westward over the whole Greek world. Here
was a king whose will was benevolence; who sought no rights but
the right to do good; whose politics were the service of
mankind:--it is a sign of the Brotherhood of Man, that his writ
ran, as you may say--the writ of his great compassion,--to the
Mediterranean shore:--

"Everywhere in the dominions of Devanampiya Piadasi, and likewise
in the neighboring realms, such as those of the Chola, Pandya,
Satiyaputra and Keralaputra, in Ceylon, in the dominions of the
Greek king Antiochus, and in those of the other kings subordinate
to that Antiochus--everywhere, on behalf of His Majesty, have two
kinds of hospitals been founded: hospitals for men, and
hospitals for beasts. Healing herbs, medicinal for man and
medicinal for beasts, wherever they were lacking, have been
imported and planted. On the roads, trees have been planted, and
wells have been dug for the use of men and beasts."

And everywhere, in all those foreign realms, he had his
missionaries preaching the Good Law. And some of these came to
Palestine, and founde