Photo: 1st century BCE engraver, Ayodhya, India. · Public domainA short Sanskrit record of Dhanadeva, lord of Kosala, who set up a memorial to his father at Ayodhya.
Dhanadeva calls himself the sixth in descent from Senapati Pushyamitra, “performer of two Ashvamedhas” (dvir-ashvamedha-yajin).
It confirms from stone what the Puranas and Kalidasa’s Malavikagnimitra say: Pushyamitra Shunga revived the Ashvamedha, and his line ruled at Ayodhya.
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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.
