Kalinga War

The Kalinga War, fought around 261 BCE in the eighth year of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka's reign, pitted his empire against the independent kingdom of Kalinga in what is now the Indian states of Odisha and northern Andhra Pradesh. Ashoka's own rock edicts record the war's devastating human cost, stating that roughly 100,000 Kalingan soldiers were killed and some 150,000 more deported, with other traditional estimates placing total casualties as high as 250,000. In his edicts, Ashoka described the profound remorse the carnage produced in him, writing that after the conquest of Kalinga he came to feel a strong inclination toward the Dharma, a conversion that historians closely associate with his subsequent embrace of Buddhism and the principle of ahimsa, or non-violence. Following the war, Ashoka renounced further military expansion for the remainder of his roughly forty-year reign, instead promoting Buddhist ethical governance, public works and interfaith tolerance across his empire, making the Kalinga War one of history's most frequently cited examples of a military victory that directly transformed its victor's subsequent policy and worldview.