There are two surviving sources on Ashoka's conversion. One states that he became a follower of the Buddha at/after the Battle of Kalinga. This is a rock edict

There are two surviving sources on Ashoka's conversion. One states that he became a follower of the Buddha at/after the Battle of Kalinga. This is a rock edict attributed to Ashoka. It does not explicitly say that he converted but rather embraced the monastic path. The second which is a Buddhist textual source, says that he was always Buddhist, and he in fact had 18,000~ Jain monks put to death because their spiritual leader insulted the Buddha. Why would a Buddhist source lie? Modern historians play up the first source and bury the latter.