Ashoka's Edicts and the Ethics of Rule

Ashoka ruled the Maurya Empire in South Asia from about 268 to 232 BCE. According to his own inscriptions, the bloody conquest of Kalinga left him filled with remorse, and he turned to dhamma, a code of moral conduct influenced by Buddhist teaching. He had edicts carved on rocks and pillars across his empire urging respect for parents and elders, kindness to servants and enslaved people, tolerance between religious groups, and care for animals.

He also described building wells, rest houses and medical facilities for people and animals. The edicts are not a list of rights that subjects could claim against the king; they are instructions from a ruler about how he and others should behave. Even so, they show an early government arguing that power carries moral obligations to the weak. Historians debate how far practice matched the words, since the inscriptions are the king's own account.