The year is 261 BCE. On a scorched plain by the banks of the Daya River, the air hangs heavy with the metallic scent of blood and the stench of charred earth. Smoke curls from dying pyres. Vultures circle above like omens. Across this battlefield, once green with life, lies a grim tapestry of twisted bodies—soldiers in shattered armour, villagers clutching lifeless children, merchants struck down beside overturned carts.
At the edge of this carnage stands Emperor Ashoka, his imperial standard fluttering in the wind, stained and torn. His war elephant is still, its ears twitching at the cries of the wounded. Ashoka does not speak. His eyes, often fierce and proud, are hollow, locked on the devastation he has unleashed. A hundred thousand dead. Another 1,50,000 uprooted. Kalinga is now a graveyard.
And in this moment of ruin, the conqueror collapses inward. The sword slips from his grip—not onto enemy flesh, but onto his own soul. What rises from that battlefield is not another edict of power, but a vow—never again. The drumbeats of war give way to the silence of dharma. He will rule not through blood, but through mercy. Or so the popular story goes.
But what led him here? Why was Ashoka, the master of Magadha’s vast empire, so determined to conquer Kalinga? To control the Great Metal Highway and through it, the lucrative metal trade and sea routes.
Deep in the jungles of what is today Jharkhand and eastern Madhya Pradesh, tribal communities had, over centuries, mastered the art of iron smelting. From their forges came tools, weapons and ornaments that were carried southward to the rice-rich lands near the Mahanadi Delta, leading to emergence of early Kalinga.
By the fourth century BCE, the kingdom of Kalinga had risen as a powerful, independent force due to the availability of metal and rice, with a network of prosperous cities. Its capital, Sisupalgarh, near present-day Bhubaneshwar, was a masterpiece of urban planning. Perfectly square in layout, divided into neat blocks by roads, and protected by stone fortifications, Sisupalgarh rivalled any northern city in wealth and elegance. Other towns like Jaugada, Asurgarh and Budhigarh added to Kalinga’s prosperity, producing copper tools, beads carved from carnelian and agate, and delicate works of terracotta, ivory and glass.
To Ashoka, Kalinga wasn’t just a rebellious neighbour. It was the key to controlling the entire metal and maritime economy of Eastern India. Whoever ruled Kalinga controlled the movement of iron from the forests, rice from the plains and ships that sailed from its many ports, especially the great port of Tamralipta (see Network 5), carrying goods, monks and ideas across the Bay of Bengal.
And so Ashoka marched south with his army, following the very cart roads that had once carried bullock carts and merchants. These routes, snaking alongside the Subarnarekha and Damodar rivers, had long linked Magadha, Ashoka’s kingdom, with the eastern coast. They were the highways of wealth. And they now became the highways of war. After the conquest, Ashoka added Kalinga to his empire. It formed part of the vast Mauryan economic network that stretched all the way west to Sopara (see Network 1) and Kandahar (see Network 12) and beyond.
But the trauma of what he had done never left him. He began sending Buddhist monks along those same routes to Kalinga—not to conquer, but to preach. From Magadha, they travelled south, passing through Odisha, reaching coastal Andhra and finally boarding ships bound for Sri Lanka and South-East Asia. From ports like Tamralipta and the now-forgotten Dantapura, Buddhism crossed oceans and became a global faith. Legend says that from Dantapura, the sacred tooth relic of the Buddha was taken to Sri Lanka, where it still rests today in the golden shrine of Kandy.
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Dense tribal zones
Jainism, too, flowed through these lands. The early Jains, avoiding farming in adherence to their beliefs, found opportunity in trade. They bought forest metal extracted by tribals in barter for salt and textiles, and sold it to the cities of Magadha and Kalinga. The third- century bce Jain text Acarangasutra10 traces Mahavira’s journey through these dense tribal zones, territories that would become key to Jain economic life.
After the Mauryas faded, Kalinga did not vanish. Around the first century bce, King Kharavela rose from the same soil. His inscriptions at Hathigumpha, carved into cave walls near Bhubaneshwar, speak of restored canals, waived taxes, dance festivals, city walls rebuilt and the capital—Kalinganagara, present-day Sisupalgarh, reimagined in splendour. King Kharavela is said to have marched along the same cart routes north to Magadha, during his military campaigns of conquest and subjugation. He was also a contemporary of the Satavahanas, who ruled over Paithan (see Network 1) and Amaravathi (see Network 3), and fought several wars with them.
After Kharavela, it was after a gap of six centuries, in the eighth and ninth centuries ce, that a new dynasty, the Bhaumakaras, would bring a new age of prosperity to Odisha. Their wealth built great Tantric Buddhist centres, where mysterious rituals, bronze sculptures and global pilgrimages flourished, leaving a legacy that would echo across the Himalayas and into Tibet, Mongolia and China.
This excerpt from The Wealth Networks by Akshay Chavan has been published with permission from Penguin Random House.