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THE GREATNESS AND PIETY OF ASOKA 347 which no Kalinga patriot could have improved upon, the terrible misery that he had inflicted on a hapless province. The example of Dharmāśoka, the pious king, exercised an ennobling influence on posterity. In the second century A.D. Queen Gautami Balaśrî takes pride in the fact that her son was "alien to hurting life even towards an offending enemy” (Kitāparādhe pi satujane apānahisāruchi). Even in the fifth century A.D., the rest-houses and free hospitals of Magadha excited the wonder and admiration of foreigners. The benefactions of Dharmāśoka were a source of inspiration to royal personages as late as the time of Govindachandra of the Gāhadavāla dynasty.
We have already seen that the political record of the great Maurya's early years was brilliant. His reign saw the final triumph of those centripetal forces that had been at work since the days of Bimbisāra. The conquest of Kalinga completed the unification of non-Tamil India under the hegemony of Magadha. The dream of a United Jambudvipa was nearly realised.
But the policy of Dhamma-vijaya which he formulated after the Kalinga War was not likely to promote the cause for which a long line of able sovereigns from Bimbisāra to Bindusāra had lived and struggled. The statesman who turned civil administrators into religious propagandists, abolished hunting and jousts of arms, entrusted the fierce tribesmen on the North-West Frontier and in the wilds of the Deccan to the tender care of "superintendents of piety" and did not rest till the sound of the war-drum was completely hushed and the only sound that was heard was that of moral teaching, certainly pursued a policy at which Chandragupta Maurya would have looked askance. Dark clouds were looming in the north-western horizon. India needed men of the calibre of Puru and Chandragupta to ensure her protection
