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AN EARLY HISTORY OF ORISSA when he issued Minor Rock Edict I. The same year (260 B. C.) was associated not merely with his first Rock Edict, but also with the first of his "Pious Tours' (probably to the Bodha Gaya) which took place after he had been consecrated ten years' as has been stated by him in Rock Edict VIII.
Such results out of a war. To the political annals of India, the greatest gift of Kalinga is her submission to Asoka after a heroic war. Without the Kalingit war, the name of Asok a might have remained one of the numberless unimportant names in Indian history. The Kalinga war is the one in the annals of human history that changed the heart of its victor from one of wanton cruelty to that of an examplary picty. It changed the very course of Indian history by affecting a change in the omnipotent personality of the Age. No longer, Asoka was it leader of the Magadhan armies, a champion of Indian Imperialism or an Emperor of the Maurya Empire, but hereafter he was the veritable father of men-all men, irrespective of caste and creed and also position--the great philanthropist and a preacher. •All men are my children and as on behalf of my own children, I desire that they may be provided with complete welfare and happiness, same I desire also on behalf of all men’-declared Asoka in his Edicts, which he specially engraved on a rock situated at Dhauli in the very heart of the Kalinga country. The conversion of Asoka is not merely a biographical fact of great importance. It reacted in many ways upon his policy and administration, and it led directly to the writing and publication of his historic Edicts, which, inscribed on rocks and pillars in all parts of his dominions, served, in the first instance, to inform his subject about his faith, about his life and
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