POLITICAL HISTORY.
centuries, respectively, before Christ; chap. II. Early History. by the Sanskrit grammarians Kátyáyana and Pánini, who flourished in the fourth century B.C.; and in the Rámáyana and Mahábhárata. The Buddhist chronicles refer to its forests and the settlement on its coast to which the left canine tooth of Buddha was brought in state immediately after his death; but the Bráhmanical writings speak scornfully of it, saying that 'he commits sin through his feet, who travels to the country of the Kalingas' and prescribing the purification necessary to expiate such an act. Megasthenes (302 B.C.) however writes of the Kalingas as a civilized people divided into classes which followed widely different occupations (among them the study of philosophy and the taming of wild elephants) and mentions their capital, where 60,000 foot-Soldiers, 1,000 horsemen and 700 elephants kept watch and ward over their king.
In 260 B.C. Asóka, the great emperor of the Buddhist Mauryan realms (the capital of which was at Pátaliputra, the modern Patna), Its conquest by Asoka, 260 B.C. attacked and conquered Kalinga. One of his famous rock-edicts shows clearly that it was the remorse he felt for the horrors of this campaign which led him in the same year to espouse the Buddhist religion which he afterwards spread throughout India and Ceylon. Says the edict 1[1]:—
One hundred and fifty thousand persons were carried away captive (from Kalinga), one hundred thousand were there slain, and many times that number perished. ..... His Majesty feels remorse on account of the conquest of the Kalingas, because, during the subjugation of a previously unconquered country, slaughter, death, and taking away captive of the people necessarily occur, whereat His Majesty feels profound sorrow and regret. There is, however, another reason for His Majesty feeling still more regret, inasmuch as in such a country dwell Bráhmans and ascetics, men of different sects, and householders, who all practise obedience to elders, obedience to father and mother, obedience to teachers, proper treatment of friends, acquaintances, comrades, relatives, slaves and servants, with fidelity of devotion. To such people dwelling in that country happen violence, slaughter, and separation from those they love.'
The terms of this inscription further show that Kalinga at that time was capable of offering considerable resistance even to so powerful an emperor as Asóka, and that its people were a civilized race. The Buddhist remains near Anakápalle referred to on p. 223 below probably belong to this period.
A long gap in its history. For several centuries thereafter the history of Kalinga is almost a blank. Pliny (first century A.D.) mentions the country and25
- ↑ 1 Mr. Vincent Smith's Asóka(Clarendon Press, 1901), 130.
