The edicts of Ashoka
Girnar rock edict, Junagadh, Gujarat
Rock and pillar edicts in Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic, from Kandahar to Karnataka; the oldest deciphered, datable writing from India.
Ashoka dated his edicts by regnal year, from the tenth (the Greek and Aramaic bilingual at Kandahar) to the twenty-seventh (Pillar Edict VII), which gives roughly 258 to 242 BCE if his consecration fell around 268. The Girnar rock carries all fourteen Major Rock Edicts, and the find-spots, from Kandahar in the north-west to Karnataka in the south, are the best evidence for the empire's reach.
James Prinsep read the Brahmi script in 1837, starting from short donor inscriptions at Sanchi and moving on to the Delhi pillar; the same year George Turnour identified the edicts' "Devanampiya Piyadasi" with the Ashoka of the Sri Lankan chronicles. The name Ashoka itself was found on an edict only in 1915, at Maski.
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