#Kharavela

“Two centuries after Aśoka confessed on rock what his armies did to Kaliṅga, a king of Kaliṅga answered on rock — a boast for a confession — and capped it by carrying home from Magadha a sacred image the Nandas had looted some three hundred years earlier. The east kept accounts, and it settled them.”

“A king who published his own annual report — seventeen lines carved on the brow of a cave, itemizing his reign year by year, canals and concerts entered beside conquests — and so became the one major figure of ancient India known to us entirely from his own advertisement.”