The first state to bring most of the Indian subcontinent under a single rule — a centralized, bureaucratic empire whose greatest emperor, Ashoka, conquered a region called Kalinga, recorded his own remorse on rock and pillar, and helped turn Buddhism into a world religion.
After a war that his own edict says killed a hundred thousand people, the most powerful ruler India had ever known did something almost no conqueror of the ancient world is known to have done. He carved his own remorse into stone, in plain sight, across an empire that stretched from Afghanistan to the Bay of Bengal. The emperor was Ashoka, and the empire was the Maurya — the first state to pull nearly the whole subcontinent under one throne. Most ancient kings left us their victories in stone. Ashoka left us his regret.