Daily History Challenge · No. 113 · Monday 19 October 2026 · When?
Puzzle No. 113: When?
The event was The Kalinga War and Ashoka's turn to Dhamma, in c. 261 BCE.
The answer
Around 261 BCE the Mauryan emperor Ashoka conquered Kalinga (coastal Odisha), a war his own thirteenth Major Rock Edict records as causing some 100,000 deaths, many more from disease and famine, and 150,000 deportations. Ashoka's edicts state that remorse over this carnage turned him toward the Buddha's teaching and a policy of rule by Dhamma, moral law emphasising non-violence, tolerance, welfare and right conduct. Whether his embrace of Buddhism was a sudden conversion or a gradual deepening is debated by historians, but its public consequences were immense. Ashoka inscribed edicts in Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic on rocks and polished sandstone pillars across the subcontinent, the earliest decipherable indigenous writing in India and among the oldest royal proclamations of an ethical, religiously tolerant statecraft anywhere. He built stupas, sponsored Buddhist institutions, and dispatched emissaries abroad, transforming a regional sect into a trans-regional, and ultimately pan-Asian, religion.