Photo: Rājendra Chola (r. 1012-1042 AD) · CC BY 4.0The largest Chola copper-plate charter: a Sanskrit genealogy and a Tamil grant to the Shiva temple at Tiruvalangadu.
The Sanskrit part traces the Cholas from the Solar line and lists Rajendra’s victories: Lanka, the Chalukyas, and the march to the Ganga, where his general defeated Mahipala of Bengal and Ganga water was carried south to sanctify the Chola land.
It is the primary record of Rajendra’s Ganga expedition, the event behind his title Gangaikonda.
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.
