Ashoka3rd century BC Mauryan Emperor

The following is an extract from the travel book A River of Life: Travels through Modern India.

"You can catch these buses from the museum," the receptionist tells me as I am settling my account. "All the time buses leaving for Puri."

The day is hot, already close, though not without a lingering trace of nighttime coolness. It doesn't take long for the sun to boil it away. I take a rickshaw to the museum, climb aboard a bus already waiting there. Beads of perspiration begin to gather at the base of my neck. I mop my brow where the band of my hat has brought up sweat. My back and the backs of my legs begin to glue themselves to the upholstery of the seat. It is a relief when the last of the seats is taken and we are on our way.

The city quickly dissolves - a clutter of modern buildings, a sprinkling of dark sandstone temples, thinning, gone - and we are out in the green wilds. Palm trees line a waterway some yards from the road, the slender line of water showing intermittently through gaps in the trunks, appearing and disappearing with the capriciousness of a desert mirage. Thick-trunked trees have been planted at regular intervals along the dusty verge of the road, their foliage an arresting mix of mature leaves - a pale green - and newly-sprouted ones - pink and fleshy, like lolling tongues. Atop a distant hill is the Shanti Stupa of Dhauli, its domed white structure on tawny sandstone looking like a bubble frothed up by an agitated sea, shimmering in the hazy heat as if about to burst. I had visited Dhauli Hill yesterday, after my trip to Udayagiri and Khandagiri. The hill overlooks the spot where the last great Mauryan emperor, Ashoka, defeated the early Kalinga kingdom in the 3rd century BC, in a battle so bloody it turned the nearby Daya River red and caused Ashoka, out of remorse for the hundreds of thousands slain, to embrace Buddhism and renounce his violent ways. In an effort to promote his new-found faith, he had had its principles engraved on rock edicts scattered throughout his kingdom, one of which still existed at the foot of Dhauli Hill. They exhorted his subjects to follow the path of dharma, or right conduct, which entailed the energetic pursuit of virtue, compassion, benevolence, nonviolence - in short, to lead a life of "little sin and many good deeds".