Photo: पाटलिपुत्र (Patna) · Public domainAshoka’s message of dhamma, carved in Greek and Aramaic for the Greek and Persian-speaking subjects at the western edge of his empire.
The Greek text opens: ‘Ten years having been completed, King Piodasses showed piety to men.’ It goes on that the king keeps from killing living beings, that the king’s hunters and fishermen have stopped, and that men now obey their mother, father and elders. Dhamma is rendered in Greek as eusebeia, piety.
It shows that Mauryan rule reached Arachosia (Kandahar), and that Ashoka spoke to his subjects there in their own languages.
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.
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.
InscriptionA Sanskrit record of a stone enclosure built for the worship of Sankarshana and Vasudeva by a king who had performed the Ashvamedha.
