Ashoka almost certainly overestimat

Ashoka almost certainly overestimated what can be done through behavioural reform alone. He had started as a severe and stern emperor, but underwent a major moral and political conversion after being revolted by the barbarity he saw in his own victorious war against a remaining unconquered territory in India (Kalinga, what is today's Orissa). He decided to change his moral and political priori¬ties, embraced the non-violent teachings of Gautama Buddha, gradu-ally disbanded his army and went about liberating the slaves and indentured labourers, and took on the role of a moral teacher rather than that of a strong ruler. Sadly, Ashoka's vast empire dissolved into fragments of fractured territory not long after his own death, but there is some evidence that this did not happen during his own life¬time partly because of the awe in which he was held by the people at large, but also because he had not, in fact, fully dismantled the Kauti- lyan administrative system of disciplined rule (as Bruce Rich has discussed).