When the war in Kalinga was over…and the people [were] conquered, he [Asoka] felt inside him a great crisis, a stirring for meaning and a remorse. Asoka goes on
a pilgrimage seeking a guru, a teacher. And by the riverbank he met a Buddhist
monk and the monk told him to sit beneath the Bodhi tree where the Buddha had
found enlightenment. And there the power of ideas and the power of the state came
together in a uniquely Indian way. [It was] a rejection of the path of violence [and]
of a whole way of understanding history. While he was here, Asoka gave rich gifts
to the poor. He consulted with local communities about proper governance, about
good conduct…forming in his mind now was a political order the sort of which
had never been conceived of before in the history of the world.

What did Micheal Wood mean when he says, “[it was] a rejection . . . of a whole way understanding history”? Please help me as fast as possible!!