Introduction of the Poem:
“Dhauli” (1979) is a sensitive account of the Kalinga War (261 BC) that wiped off thousands of lives to satiate a single individual's hunger for power. Mahapatra does not hail the power and military exploits of Ashoka. His sympathy reaches out instead to the vanquished and the dead who find no mention in Ashoka's rock edicts. The stream Daya that flows close to the scene of battle in Dhauli is said to have become bloody, filled with the butchered and mutilated bodies which the jackals and foxes feasted upon. The poem is elegiac in tone and speculative in style.
Critical Summary:
After the catastrophic wars of Kalinga were over, the barren fields of Dhauli were filled with the bloody but charred bodies of the dead. These slaughtered warriors not only satiated the hunger of power and suzerainty of a single individual (Ashoka) but also the insatiable hunger of jackals and foxes who ate into the limp genitals of dead men, although they were now infested with worms. Genitals here signify the virility of the vanquished warriors; they are “limp” because they have been defeated.
Years after the Kalinga wars were over, Ashoka installed rock pillars along the river Daya. These rock edicts described the horrors of the wars and Ashoka's compassion, benevolence and pity; and his turning a Buddhist. The pillars are reflected in the shining waters of the river Daya. But edicts are as mute as cicadas, the shrill sounding insects that emerge after dusk. The elements have not forgotten the atrocities of wars waged by the power - hungry Ashoka.
In these rock edicts, there is hardly any mention of Ashoka's regret and repentance at waging such bloody wars, or the emperor seeking forgiveness of the hundreds of thousands who were killed. The pillars thus stand a mute testimony to the pain inflicted by Ashoka on the innocent victims of carnage. They are a testimony to his lust for power and suzerainty.
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