Q1.
Do you remember the Kalinga war mentioned in the previous chapter?
Answer
Yes. The Kalinga war was Aśhoka's war against the kingdom of Kalinga (roughly present-day Odisha), fought about 261 BCE. Its scale of death and suffering shook Aśhoka so deeply that he turned away from conquest by war (bherighoṣha) towards conquest by dhamma (dhammaghoṣha), and had that change recorded in his edicts.
The chapter asks you to remember it because of what happened next in the same region:
c. 261 BCE — Kalinga is conquered by Aśhoka
After 185 BCE — the Maurya empire declines
→ Kalinga rises again, now as a prominent power under the kings of the Chedi dynasty
→ its greatest ruler, Khāravela, records his deeds in the Hāthīgumphā inscription
After 185 BCE — the Maurya empire declines
→ Kalinga rises again, now as a prominent power under the kings of the Chedi dynasty
→ its greatest ruler, Khāravela, records his deeds in the Hāthīgumphā inscription
Why it matters: this is the ‘reorganisation' of the chapter's title happening in one place. A region absorbed by an empire did not vanish; the moment the empire weakened, Kalinga re-emerged as an independent kingdom — with its own dynasty, its own capital region near Bhubaneswar, and its own record in stone.