The general effect of Asoka’s rule on the history of Buddhism and indeed of Asia is clear, but there is still some difference of opinion as to the date of his conversion.  The most important document for the chronology of his reign is the inscription known as the first Minor Rock Edict[578].  It is now generally admitted that it does not state the time which has elapsed since the death of the Buddha, as was once supposed, and that the King relates in it how for more than two and a half years after his conversion to Buddhism he was a lay-believer and did not exert himself strenuously, but subsequently joined the Sangha[579] and began to devote his energies to religion rather more than a year before the publication of the edict.  This proclamation has been regarded by some as the first, by others as the last of his edicts.  On the latter supposition we must imagine that he published a long series of ethical but not definitely Buddhist ordinances and that late in life he became first a lay-believer and then a monk, probably abdicating at the same time.  But the King is exceedingly candid as to his changes of life and mind:  he tells us how the horrors of the war with Kalinga affected him, how he was an easygoing layman and then a zealous monk.  Had there been a stage between the war and his acceptance of Buddhism as a layman, a period of many years in which he devoted himself to the moral progress of his people without being himself a Buddhist, he would surely have explained it.  Moreover in the Bhabru edict, which is distinctly ecclesiastical and deals with the Buddhist scriptures, he employs his favourite word Dhamma in the strict Buddhist sense, without indicating that he is giving it an unusual or new meaning.  I therefore think it probable that he became a lay Buddhist soon after the conquest of Kalinga, that is in the ninth or tenth year after his accession, and a member of the Sangha two and a half years later.  On this hypothesis all his edicts are the utterances of a Buddhist.

It may be objected that no one could be a monk and at the same time govern a great empire:  it is more natural and more in accordance with Indian usage that towards the end of his life an aged king should abdicate and renounce the world.  But Wu Ti, the Buddhist Emperor of China, retired to a monastery twice in the course of his long reign and the cloistered Emperors of Japan in the eleventh and twelfth centuries continued to direct the policy of their country, although they abdicated in name and set a child on the throne as titular ruler.  The Buddhist Church was not likely to criticize Asoka’s method of keeping his monastic vows and indeed it may be said that his activity was not so much that of a pious emperor as of an archbishop possessed of exceptional temporal power.  He definitely renounced conquest and military ambitions and appears to have paid no attention to ordinary civil administration which he perhaps entrusted to Commissioners; he devoted himself to philanthropic