Photo: Thomas A. Rust circa 1870 (photograph)
Rubbing: Inscription · Public domainHarishena, minister and poet of Samudragupta, carved a long Sanskrit eulogy of his king onto a pillar that already bore Ashoka’s edicts.
It lists the kings of Aryavarta whom Samudragupta uprooted, the twelve kings of Dakshinapatha, among them Vishnugopa of Kanchi, whom he captured and then set free, and the frontier kingdoms (Samatata, Kamarupa, Nepala and others) that paid tribute. It praises him as a poet and a musician. Jahangir later added his own genealogy to the same shaft.
It is the main source for the extent of Samudragupta’s conquests and the shape of the early Gupta empire.
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.
