King Asoka and Buddhism - Urban Dharma

There are some topics which have been repeated over and over againowing to their sweetness, so that people may act accordingly. Theremay be some topics which have been written incompletely eitheras the particular place of a record was considered unsuitable for themor as a special reason for abridgment was believed to exist, andalso owing to a fault of the scribe. (Emphasis mine.)According to this, the only reason for omitting RE XIII couldhave been that Aśoka considered its contents unsuitable for thepeople of Kalinga. Then arises the question: Why? Was there anyreason why Aśoka had to keep away from his Kalingan subjectsthe fact that he repented the havoc he created there or that it wasthat war which changed his entire imperialist policy?There is no doubt room for a sneaking suspicion that thereis something very strange if Aśoka considered the contents ofRE XIII to be unsuitable for his subjects in Kalinga at eitherJaugada or Dhauli. What exactly is it that he did not want themto know? The number of casualties? His repentance? Or the“softening” of his militaristic policy?These are about the only sensitive matters which couldhave influenced his decision unless, of course, one can, evenmost reluctantly, conceive of an extreme case of inexactitudeon the part of Aśoka and conclude that the whole episode onthe Kalinga war and its consequences was more imaginarythan real. It would then be only an attractive story, presentedin vivid colour, to impress those who were far removed fromthe scene both by distance and time and hence unable to verifyits truth or accuracy. That would be to say that Aśoka couldnot possibly tell the Kalingas of a war that did not take placeor whose results and extent of damage were different. In spiteof the richness of details and the general historical reliabilityof the Buddhist literary sources in both Pali and Sanskrit, they56