Asoka’s inherited dominions included India, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan. The first internationalist, he sent religious and cultural missions, with many gifts and blessings, to Burma, Ceylon, Egypt, Syria, and Macedonia. “Asoka, the third king of the Maurya line, was one...of the great philosopher-kings of history,” the scholar P. Masson-Oursel observed. “No one has combined energy and benevolence, justice and charity, as he did. He was the living embodiment of his own time, and he comes before us as quite a modern figure.
