Edicts of Ashoka
Ashoka's Dhamma Edicts
A ruler's power should be exercised for the moral and material welfare of all subjects, and after witnessing the suffering caused by his own war of conquest, the king binds himself publicly, in stone, to a program of nonviolence, religious tolerance, and welfare administration.
- public royal renunciation of war after the Kalinga conquest
- dhamma as state policy: tolerance, welfare, restraint in punishment
- inscribed across the empire in Prakrit, Greek, and Aramaic
- the earliest surviving body of royal inscriptions in India
A body of edicts inscribed on rock faces and stone pillars across the Mauryan Empire, in which Ashoka, after his conquest of Kalinga, describes his remorse at the war's bloodshed and announces a policy of dhamma emphasizing nonviolence, tolerance among religious sects, welfare works, and restraint in punishment. Inscribed in Prakrit using Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts, with Greek and Aramaic versions near the empire's northwest frontier, they are the earliest surviving royal inscriptions in India and a rare case of a ruler's own voice describing a change of policy.
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