Romila Thapar's Asoka: the edict's number is verified. The count is not.

The work · representative

Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (1961)

Oxford University Press. A study of Asoka's reign and the Mauryan decline, with the edicts translated in an appendix.

FactThe Library of Congress entry names no single winning title. Its selected publications list A History of India, Communalism and the Writing of Indian History, Interpreting Early India and Early India. So we call this a representative work, not the prize-winning book.

It runs seven chapters, from the sources (p. 1) to the decline (p. 197), then six appendices. Appendix V, from p. 250, translates the edicts themselves. That is where the numbers live.

We cite the 1961 original edition by page. No licensed free edition is on record, so we link the Open Library record instead of a scan.

The one result

Dhamma was a policy for holding a diverse empire together

Thapar 1961, chapter V, on the policy of Dhamma, from p. 137. Wilhelm, journal review, pp. 327 to 328.

In chapter V (from p. 137), Thapar reads Asoka's Dhamma as an ethical policy for holding a diverse empire together, rather than simply a campaign to spread Buddhism.

That makes the link between moral teaching and political authority the centre of her explanation of the reign. Wilhelm's scholarly review reads it the same way: ethical and politically integrative, not merely missionary.

InterpretationA reading of the argument, not a measured cause. It also fits what the Kluge citation praises; that link is our comparison, not the committee's.

The passage

The king counts his own war

Major Rock Edict XIII, in Thapar's translation on p. 255, is the passage this page is built on. In it the king himself puts numbers on the conquest of Kalinga.

Our choice of passage. Thapar does not designate a central statistic.

Chart 1 · the result

The edict gives Kalinga two exact counts: 150,000 deported, 100,000 killed

It adds that more died afterwards, but gives no number. We leave that row empty rather than draw it as zero.

Rebuilt from the work's own text: Thapar 1961, Appendix V, Major Rock Edict XIII, p. 255. People as stated in the translation.

Source: Thapar, Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (1961), App. V, p. 255. Values are the edict's statements, not estimates.

Chart 2 · the trail

The edicts date themselves, from year 8 to year 26 of the reign

Kalinga falls 8 years after Asoka's consecration. The last dated act here, a pillar inscription, is in year 26.

Kept in years since consecration, as the inscriptions state them. Converting to calendar dates is contested, so we don't.

Source: Thapar 1961, Appendix V, pp. 251 to 262. Rebuilt from the work's own translations.

Numbers in stone

Precise, public and the king's own

Every number on this page comes from a royal inscription, read through one historian's translation. That is a strong source for what the king said. It is a different kind of source for what happened.

Lens read · one figure

What the chart actually verifies

The one-figure lens asks for the work's central number, rebuilt from its own source. For this book that is Edict XIII's two counts, an editorial choice, since Thapar names no central statistic.

Rebuilding them checks one thing: that 150,000 and 100,000 are what the translation on p. 255 says. They are. We marked them verified as statements.

What the chart cannot check is whether 100,000 people died. We found no independent measurement of any of these royal numbers, so that stronger claim stays unverified and off the page. The uncounted further deaths are left out, not set to zero.

What came after

The book was revised. The question moved on.

No retraction turned up in the records we checked. We have not compared the editions line by line.