“Work I must for the public benefit,—­and the root of the matter is in exertion and dispatch of business, than which nothing is more efficacious for the public welfare.  And for what end do I toil?  For no other end than that I may discharge my debt to animate beings.”

And again: 

“Devanampiya Piadasi desires that in all places men of all religions may abide, for they all desire purity of mind and mastery over the senses.”

Well; for nine and twenty years he held that vast empire warless; even though it included within its boundaries many restless and savage tribes.  Certainly only the greatest, strongest, and wisest of rulers could do that; it has not been done since (though Akbar came near it).  We know nothing as to how literature may have been enriched; some think that the great epics may have come from this time.  If so, it would only have been recensions of them, I imagine.  But in art and architecture his reign was everything.  He built splendid cities, and strewed the land with wonderful buildings and monoliths.  Patna, the capital, in Megasthenes’ time nine miles long by one and a half wide, and built of wood, he rebuilt in stone with walls intricately sculptured.  Education was very widespread or universal.  His edicts are sermons preached to the masses:  simple ethical teachings touching on all points necessary to right living.  He had them carved on rock, and set them up by the roadsides and in all much-frequented places, where the masses could read them; and this proves that the masses could read.  They are all vibrant with his tender care, not alone for his human subjects, but for all sentient beings.  “Work I must.... that I may discharge my debt to all things animate.”  And how he did work without one private moment in the day or night, as his decrees show, in which he should be undisturbed by the calls of those who needed help.  He specifies; he particularizes; there was no moment to be considered private, or his personal own.

And even then he was not content.  There were foreign lands; and those, too, were entitled to his care.  I said that the southern tip of India, with Ceylon, were within his sphere of influence:  his sphere of influence was much wider than that, however.  Saying that a king’s sphere of influence is wherever he can get his will done, Asoka’s extended westward over the whole Greek world.  Here was a king whose will was benevolence; who sought no rights but the right to do good; whose politics were the service of mankind:—­it is a sign of the Brotherhood of Man, that his writ ran, as you may say—­the writ of his great compassion,—­to the Mediterranean shore:—­

“Everywhere in the dominions of Devanampiya Piadasi, and likewise in the neighboring realms, such as those of the Chola, Pandya, Satiyaputra and Keralaputra, in Ceylon, in the dominions of the Greek king Antiochus, and in those of the other kings subordinate to that Antiochus—­everywhere, on behalf of His Majesty, have two kinds of hospitals been founded:  hospitals for men, and hospitals for beasts.  Healing herbs, medicinal for man and medicinal for beasts, wherever they were lacking, have been imported and planted.  On the roads, trees have been planted, and wells have been dug for the use of men and beasts.”