Kalinga War

The Kalinga War was fought in 261 BC between the Mauryan Empire under Emperor Ashoka and the independent state of Kalinga on India's eastern coast, corresponding roughly to modern Odisha. Ashoka's campaign succeeded in conquering and annexing Kalinga, one of the last major independent powers on the subcontinent to resist Mauryan expansion, but the war's scale of bloodshed, traditionally recorded as hundreds of thousands killed, deported or displaced, is described in Ashoka's own Thirteenth Major Rock Edict as having provoked deep remorse. The edict records Ashoka's subsequent turn toward Buddhism and his adoption of a policy of dhamma, or moral governance, renouncing further wars of conquest for the rest of his reign. The Kalinga War is consequently remembered less for its military course than as the turning point that transformed Ashoka's reputation from a conquering emperor into one of history's most cited examples of a ruler renouncing warfare after victory.