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Worksheet: eight questions on reading evidence

Reading the evidence: how do we know?

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  1. In Ashoka’s edicts, who is speaking, and under what name? How did scholars come to know that this king was Ashoka?

  2. Rock Edict XIII names five Greek kings. How do these names help to date Ashoka?

  3. The Allahabad pillar carries writing from more than one ruler. Name three, and say which of these texts carry a date.

  4. On Samudragupta’s Ashvamedha coin one word of the legend is read in two ways. Why is the reading uncertain, and does it change what the coin records?

  5. At Keezhadi, what do the finds show about writing in the town, and what is still unsettled?

  6. The Dholavira signboard cannot be read. What can a historian still say from it, and what must be left unsaid?

  7. The Maasir-i-Alamgiri records the order of 1669 to demolish temples and the demolition of the Vishwanath temple at Kashi. Who wrote this book, and why does that matter when we weigh these entries?

  8. For the date of the Mahabharata war, what can archaeology say and what can it not? Name one thing that would help to settle the question.

Answer guide

Model answers. A different answer that is supported by the record is also right.

  1. The Maurya emperor speaks in his own voice as Devanampiya Piyadasi. That this was Ashoka was established in 1915, when a minor rock edict found at Maski in Karnataka named him Devanampiya Asoka.

    See: Edicts of Ashoka

  2. Their reigns are known from Greek sources and overlap only in the 260s and early 250s BCE, so the edict cannot be much later than that. Counting back from the regnal years gives an abhisheka around 268 BCE, which scholars move by a few years either way.

    See: Edicts of Ashoka

  3. Ashoka’s edicts, Harishena’s prashasti of Samudragupta and Jahangir’s genealogy are all on the same shaft. The Samudragupta poem has no date; Jahangir’s genealogy is dated 1605.

    See: Allahabad pillar prashasti of Samudragupta

  4. The letters on most specimens are cut off at the edge, so scholars pieced the verse together from several coins; most read avitva, having protected the earth, and some read vijitva, having conquered it. Either way the coin records that the king of kings has performed the horse sacrifice.

    See: Samudragupta’s Ashvamedha coin

  5. Dozens of potsherds carry Tamil-Brahmi writing, many of them personal names, which suggests that reading and writing were common among ordinary townspeople. The dating of the earliest layers is still discussed, and the record says more dates from the lowest layers are needed.

    See: Keezhadi excavations

  6. Ten large signs set up at a city gate show writing made for the public to see, and that weighs against the view that the Indus signs were not a script at all. What the board named, whether the city, its lord or its deity, is not known.

    See: The Dholavira signboard

  7. Saqi Mustaid Khan, a court official who had served Aurangzeb for decades, completed it in 1710 from the state archives and his own service. It is the Mughal court’s own record, so these entries come from the side that gave the orders.

    See: Maasir-i-Alamgiri

  8. Archaeology can say when the towns named in the Mahabharata, Hastinapura, Indraprastha and Kurukshetra, were lived in; it cannot find a battle fought on an open plain. An inscription from before Ashoka that counts years from the war would help to settle it, and until then the Kali epoch of 3102 BCE remains the reference point that Indian calendars use.

    See: When was the Mahabharata war?

Records used

  • Edicts of Ashoka: https://www.hinduhistory.in/evidence/ashoka-edicts/
  • Allahabad pillar prashasti of Samudragupta: https://www.hinduhistory.in/evidence/allahabad-pillar/
  • Samudragupta’s Ashvamedha coin: https://www.hinduhistory.in/evidence/samudragupta-ashvamedha-coin/
  • Keezhadi excavations: https://www.hinduhistory.in/evidence/keezhadi-excavations/
  • The Dholavira signboard: https://www.hinduhistory.in/evidence/dholavira-signboard/
  • Maasir-i-Alamgiri: https://www.hinduhistory.in/evidence/maasir-i-alamgiri/
  • When was the Mahabharata war?: https://www.hinduhistory.in/vimarsha/mahabharata-war-date/

The questions in this path are drawn from the records on this site and have not yet been reviewed by a teacher or subject expert.