Photo: Ms Sarah Welch · CC0A Sanskrit prashasti of the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II by the Jain poet Ravikirti, who built the temple.
Pulakeshin defeated Harsha, “whose joy (harsha) melted away” when his elephants fell in battle. The poem dates itself both by the Shaka era and by 3,735 years elapsed since the Bharata war, and Ravikirti claims fame equal to Kalidasa and Bharavi.
It records the Narmada frontier between Harsha and the Chalukyas, gives the earliest firm date for Kalidasa’s fame, and counts years from the Mahabharata war.
InscriptionA treaty between the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I and Shattiwaza, prince of Mitanni in north Syria, sworn before the gods of both kingdoms. Among the Mitanni gods stand four names any Vedic priest would know.
InscriptionThe Persian king Darius I tells, in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, how he took the throne and which lands obeyed him. Gandhara is on the list.
InscriptionAshoka’s message of dhamma, carved in Greek and Aramaic for the Greek and Persian-speaking subjects at the western edge of his empire.
InscriptionFourteen major rock edicts, minor rock edicts and seven pillar edicts in which the Maurya emperor speaks in his own voice, as Devanampiya Piyadasi.
InscriptionIn conquered Kalinga, Ashoka left out the thirteenth rock edict, which mourns the war, and carved two separate edicts addressed to his officers there instead.
InscriptionA small bronze-copper plate in early Brahmi, issued by the officials of Shravasti, cast with symbols of storehouses above the text.
InscriptionSeventeen lines in Prakrit and Brahmi recording, year by year, the reign of Kharavela, the Jain emperor of Kalinga.
InscriptionA stone Garuda-dhvaja raised to Vasudeva by Heliodorus, a Greek envoy from Takshashila, at the court of King Bhagabhadra.
