Edicts of Ashoka: India's Earliest Deciphered Inscriptions

The Edicts of Ashoka are more than thirty inscriptions carved on rocks and polished stone pillars by the Maurya emperor Ashoka between about 260 and 232 BC. Spread across a territory stretching from Afghanistan to southern India, they set out his policy of dhamma, or moral law, in his own words. They are the earliest deciphered writings from South Asia and one of the most important sources for its ancient history.

Background

Ashoka ruled the Maurya Empire from around 268 to 232 BC, from the capital at Pataliputra on the Ganges. After his bloody conquest of Kalinga around 261 BC, he became a committed Buddhist lay follower and decided to govern according to ethical principles. To spread this message, he had proclamations engraved in public places where travellers, officials and pilgrims would see them or hear them read aloud.

In the inscriptions he calls himself Devanampiya Piyadasi, “Beloved of the Gods, He who looks with kindness”. The edicts are written in the first person, giving them an unusually direct and personal voice for royal records of the ancient world.

Types of inscription

Scholars group the edicts into several categories:

• Major Rock Edicts: fourteen proclamations, found together in versions at sites such as Girnar in Gujarat, Kalsi in Uttarakhand, Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra in Pakistan, and Dhauli and Jaugada in Odisha.
• Minor Rock Edicts: shorter texts, among the earliest, found especially in central and southern India, in which Ashoka describes his growing devotion to Buddhism.
• Separate Kalinga Edicts: two texts at Dhauli and Jaugada addressed to officials in newly conquered Kalinga.
• Pillar Edicts: seven proclamations carved on tall polished sandstone columns, mostly in the Ganges plain, issued late in the reign.
• Minor Pillar Inscriptions: including the Lumbini pillar marking the Buddha’s birthplace and the schism edict at Sarnath, Sanchi and Allahabad warning monks against splitting the community.
• Cave dedications: short inscriptions in the Barabar Caves of Bihar granting rock-cut shelters to the Ajivika ascetics.

Languages and scripts

Most edicts are written in forms of Prakrit, the spoken languages of the time, rather than in classical Sanskrit. The wording was adapted to regional dialects, so the versions at different sites differ in spelling and grammar.

The usual script is Brahmi, the ancestor of most modern South and South-East Asian scripts. In the north-west, at Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra, the edicts use Kharoshthi, a script written from right to left. Near Kandahar in Afghanistan, inscriptions found in the 20th century are in Greek and Aramaic, showing that Ashoka addressed the Greek-speaking and Persian-administered populations of his frontier in their own languages.

The message of dhamma

Ashoka’s dhamma was a broad moral code rather than a statement of Buddhist doctrine. The edicts urge obedience to parents, respect for elders and teachers, generosity to Brahmins and ascetics, and kind treatment of slaves and servants. They praise restraint in speech and condemn cruelty.

Several edicts concern animals. Rock Edict I restricts animal sacrifice and reports that the royal kitchen, once killing many thousands of creatures a day, now killed only two peacocks and one deer, and would soon kill none. Pillar Edict V lists animals protected from slaughter.

The edicts also describe practical welfare. Rock Edict II mentions medical treatment for people and animals and the planting of medicinal herbs. Pillar Edict VII lists banyan trees for shade, mango groves, wells and rest houses along the roads.

Religious tolerance is a central theme. Rock Edict XII asks followers of all sects to honour one another and to restrain their speech, since praising one’s own sect while disparaging others harms one’s own. Ashoka also created special officers, the dhamma-mahamatras, to promote dhamma among all communities.

Rock Edict XIII, perhaps the most famous, expresses the emperor’s remorse for the suffering caused in Kalinga and claims “conquest by dhamma” among the Greek kingdoms of the west and the Tamil kingdoms of the south.

Where and how they were read

The sites were chosen with care. Rock edicts were often carved near towns, trade routes and frontier zones, while pillars stood in the Ganges heartland and at Buddhist holy places. Many readers would have been officials, but most people could not read, so the texts were meant to be heard as well as seen. The Separate Kalinga Edicts instruct officers to have them read aloud on certain festival days, even to a single listener.

The Greek version at Kandahar, found in 1958 on a bilingual rock with Aramaic, shows how carefully the message was adapted. There Ashoka’s dhamma is rendered by the Greek word eusebeia, meaning piety or reverence, a term that a Greek-speaking audience would have understood in its own moral language.

Limits of the evidence

The edicts are royal proclamations and present the emperor as he wished to be seen. They describe intentions and policies, but they rarely show how far these were carried out across a vast empire. Historians therefore read them alongside archaeology and later texts, and debate whether dhamma was mainly a personal faith, a social ethic or a tool for holding a diverse empire together.

Decipherment

After the Maurya period the Brahmi script changed gradually, and within a few centuries the edicts could no longer be read. In 1356 the Delhi sultan Firuz Shah Tughlaq had two Ashokan pillars moved to Delhi, but no one at his court could read their inscriptions.

Modern decipherment came in the 1830s. Working in Calcutta, James Prinsep, Assay Master of the mint and secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, compared inscriptions from Sanchi and other sites. In 1837 he identified the letters of Brahmi and read the texts. In the same year George Turnour, a scholar in Ceylon, showed from the Pali chronicles that “Piyadasi” was a title of Ashoka.

Doubts about the identification remained until 1915, when a minor rock edict discovered at Maski in Karnataka named the king directly as Ashoka. Alexander Cunningham’s survey work and E. Hultzsch’s 1925 edition later put the study of the edicts on a firm footing.

Legacy

The edicts transformed Ashoka from a figure of Buddhist legend into a documented historical ruler. They provide evidence for the extent of the Maurya Empire, its administration and its contacts with the Hellenistic world. Their mention of the Cholas, Pandyas and Keralaputras is among the earliest records of the kingdoms of the Sangam Age.

Their ideals have also had a long modern life. Independent India adopted Ashoka’s lion capital from Sarnath as its national emblem and the wheel from his pillars for its flag.

Timeline

• c. 268 BC: Ashoka is consecrated as Maurya emperor.
• c. 261 BC: Conquest of Kalinga.
• c. 260–258 BC: Early Minor Rock Edicts describe Ashoka’s commitment to Buddhism.
• c. 257–256 BC: The fourteen Major Rock Edicts are issued, in the 12th and 13th years of the reign.
• c. 243–242 BC: The Pillar Edicts are issued, in the 26th and 27th years of the reign.
• c. 232 BC: Death of Ashoka.
• 1356: Firuz Shah Tughlaq moves the Topra and Meerut pillars to Delhi.
• 1837: James Prinsep deciphers Brahmi; George Turnour identifies Piyadasi as Ashoka.
• 1915: The Maski edict names Ashoka directly.

Why it matters

The Edicts of Ashoka are the earliest readable voice of a South Asian ruler and a rare record of a government trying to rule by moral persuasion. They opened ancient Indian history to modern study and remain a powerful symbol of tolerance and humane government.