ut 270 B.C. and inherited the vast
dominions of his father and grandfather. Almost all that we know of the
political events of his reign is that his coronation did not take place
until four years later, which may indicate a disputed succession, and
that he rounded off his possessions by the conquest of Kalinga, that is
the country between the Mahanadi and the Godavari, about 261 B.C. This
was the end of his military career. Nothing could be gained by further
conquests, for his empire already exceeded the limits set to effective
government by the imperfect communications of the epoch, seeing that it
extended from Afghanistan to the mouths of the Ganges and southwards
almost to Madras. No evidence substantiates the later stories which
represent him as a monster of wickedness before his conversion, but
according to the Dipavamsa he at first favoured heretics.

The general effect of Asoka's rule on the history of Buddhism and indeed
of Asia is clear, but there is still some difference of opinion as to
the date of his conversion. The most important document for the
chronology of his reign is the inscription known as the first Minor Rock
Edict[578]. It is now generally admitted that it does not state the time
which has elapsed since the death of the Buddha, as was once supposed,
and that the King relates in it how for more than two and a half years
after his conversion to Buddhism he was a lay-believer and did not exert
himself strenuously, but subsequently joined the Sangha[579] and began
to devote his energies to religion rather more than a year before the
publication of the edict. This proclamation has been regarded by some as
the first, by others as the last of his edicts. On the latter
supposition we must imagine that he published a long series of ethical
but not definitely Buddhist ordinances and that late in life he became
first a lay-believer and then a monk, probably abdicating at the same
time. But the King is exceedingly candid as to his changes of life and
mind: he tells us how the horrors of the war with Kalinga affected him,
how he was an easygoing layman and then a zealous monk. Had there been a
stage between the war and his acceptance of Buddhism as a layman, a
period of many years in which he devoted himself to the moral progress
of his people without being himself a Buddhist, he would surely have
explained it. Moreover in the Bhabru edict, which is distinctly
ecclesiastical and deals with the Buddhist scriptu