Asoka

Asoka (d.232 B.C.), third emperor of the Maurya dynasty of India, whose acceptance of Buddhism as the official religion of his vast empire contributed to that faith's predominance in Asia. He was said to have been so repelled by a particularly bloody victory of his troops over what is now Orissa that he turned to nonviolence and the Buddhist way of righteousness, and sent missionaries into Burma, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Syria, Greece, and Egypt.

See also: Buddhism.