Ashoka’s edicts sat unreadable for almost two thousand years. Then a British scholar noticed the same two characters kept ending short donation inscriptions on a stupa railing, and an entire lost script cracked open from that single clue.
MCQquestion.comAncHist0069 · Ancient Indian History
Reading Ashoka’s Edicts
Four scripts, one lost reading, and the clue that cracked it
c. 260 BCE
The Kandahar edict is carved
One of Ashoka’s earliest edicts, in Greek and Aramaic, addresses frontier populations near modern Kandahar.
3rd c. BCE
Four scripts, one empire
Brahmi and Prakrit cover most of the empire. Kharosthi serves the northwest. Then the script goes unreadable for centuries.
1836–37
A repeated word pattern appears
Short donative inscriptions from Sanchi keep ending in the same two characters. James Prinsep suspects “danam,” donation.
1837
Brahmi is deciphered
Prinsep completes the decipherment, unlocking Ashoka’s own words for the first time in nearly two thousand years.
One message, four audiences
Ashoka didn’t write one imperial message and translate it uniformly. He shifted script, language, and even tone to reach each audience on its own terms.
✅ What Ashoka’s Edicts Are Written In
Four Scripts, One Empire
- Where They Survive Ashoka’s edicts survive as inscriptions on rocks and pillars, spread across most of his empire. For their classification and full political story, see AncHist0014 — Ashoka and His Edicts.
- Language Most edicts use Prakrit, an everyday spoken language distinct from formal Sanskrit.
- Brahmi In the east and central regions, that Prakrit text is written in Brahmi script.
- Kharosthi In the northwest, edicts instead use Kharosthi script, written right to left.
- Greek/Aramaic At the empire’s far northwestern edge, near modern Kandahar, some edicts appear in Greek and Aramaic instead, reflecting real Hellenistic and Persian-influenced populations living on that frontier.
🏘️ The Kandahar Bilingual Edict
One Message, Two Registers
- Date and Site The Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription dates to around 260 BCE, roughly the eighth year of Ashoka’s reign. It is one of his earliest known edicts, carved at a site called Chehel Zina near Kandahar, Afghanistan.
- Free Translation Both the Greek and Aramaic texts appear to be free interpretations of an original Prakrit message, not word-for-word translations.
- Different Tone The two versions also strike a different tone. The Aramaic text addresses readers as subjects of “our Lord, the king.” The Greek text stays more neutral, closer to how one citizen might address another.
- What It Suggests That difference suggests Ashoka’s officials adapted the message’s register to each audience, not just its language.
🏘️ Rediscovering a Lost Script
How James Prinsep Cracked Brahmi
- Lost for Centuries Brahmi script fell out of common use long before the modern era, leaving Ashoka’s own words unreadable for centuries.
- The Clue In 1836, Captain Edward Smith sent James Prinsep short donative inscriptions found on the stone railings at Sanchi. Prinsep noticed that most of these short texts ended in the same two characters.
- The Guess He guessed those characters spelled “danam,” meaning donation, sitting exactly where a donor’s name would end.
- 1837 That single pattern gave him a foothold. By 1837, Prinsep had completed the decipherment of the Brahmi script.
- Not Alone His breakthrough built on earlier epigraphic work by contemporaries, including Alexander Cunningham, not on Prinsep working alone.
- What It Unlocked Deciphering Brahmi meant Ashoka’s own words, including his account of the Kalinga War, could finally be read again.
Test Yourself
📝 Previous Year Questions
UPSC CSP 2022 — Ashoka Edict-Site Location Matching
- UPSC 2022 The correct answer is Only two pairs. Dhauli and Erragudi (Yerragudi) are correctly matched to Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. Jaugada is also in Odisha, not Madhya Pradesh, and Kalsi is in Uttarakhand, not Karnataka — it is the only site in North India carrying the complete set of all fourteen Major Rock Edicts. Asked as: “Consider the following pairs: Site of Ashoka’s major rock edicts—Location in the State of…” (UPSC CSP 2022, GS Paper I).
UPSC CSP 2016 — Who Deciphered Ashoka’s Edicts
- UPSC 2016 The correct answer is James Prinsep, who completed the decipherment of the Brahmi script in 1837, starting from a repeated word pattern in short donative inscriptions from Sanchi. Asked as: “Who of the following had first deciphered the edicts of Emperor Ashoka?” (UPSC CSP 2016, GS Paper I).
⚡ Why the Script Choice Mattered
Local Understanding Over Uniform Identity
- Four Scripts Ashoka used at least four different scripts to carry one imperial message across his territory. That choice shows his administration prioritised local understanding over a single uniform imperial identity.
- Frontier Placement Most Major Rock Edicts sit near the empire’s frontiers, not its Gangetic-plain heartland. See AncHist0014 for what that placement suggests about his political priorities.
- Beyond India Prinsep’s method mattered beyond India. Later scholars used the same cross-script, pattern-matching approach to help crack other ancient scripts elsewhere.
- See Also For how inscriptions like these fit into the wider toolkit historians use to study ancient India, see AncHist0001 — Sources of Ancient Indian History.
Leave a Reply