Component-I (A) – Personal details: Prof. P. Bhaskar Reddy Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. Prof. P. Bhaskar Reddy Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati . & Dr. K. Muniratnam Director i/c, Epigraphy, ASI, Mysore. Prof. Susmita Basu Majumdar Dept. of AIHC , University of Calcutta. Prof. P. Bhaskar Reddy Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. 1 Component-I (B) – Description of module: Subject Name Indian Culture Paper Name Indian Epigraphy Module Name/Title Asokan Inscriptions : An overview Module Id IC / IEP / 26 Pre requisites History of Mauryan empire, rule Asoka and his edicts To know about the typology of the edicts of Asoka and Objectives their content Keywords Epigraphy / Asoka / Edicts / Mauryan E-text (Quadrant-I) : Mauryan territory under Asoka extended from Afghanistan in the north to Karnataka in the south and from Kathiwad in the west to Kalinga in the east (if not also northern Bengal). Only the areas to the east of north Bengal: Assam, the north-east and parts of Andhra, Tamilnadu and Kerala were outside this realm. The nearly pan-Indian empire consisted of the metropolitan state of Magadha, the core areas—covering the territories of former mahajanapadas located mostly in north India like Kasi, Kosala, Vatsa, Avanti, Gandhara etc. and peripheral areas—covering Afghanistan and the Deccan. The Asokan records mention that neighbouring territories and powers as Cholas, Pandyas, Satyaputra, Keralaputras, Tamraparni/Sri Lanka and Seleukidian and Ptolemaic rulers of West Asia and Egypt. With the Greek rulers of West Asia and Egypt peaceful ties were maintained during the reigns of the first three Mauryan rulers, Chandragupta, Bidusara and Asoka, for nearly a century. Mauryas are credited with establishing a strong administrative system with a lofty ideal of paternalistic role of the emperor himself. They were the first power in India to have developed a graded bureaucracy with a differentiated salary-scale and varied functionaries: especially strong military and revenue administrative machinery. Asoka's Dhamma as a very broad-based ideology of the State, attempting a welding of a subcontinental society marked by immense diversities—ethnic, socio-economic, cultural and religious belief systems. Promotion of Buddhism was done in course of the propagation of Dhamma, but Buddhism was never turned into the state cult/ religion in spite of Asoka's personal leanings to Buddhism. Asoka's emphasised on religious plurality: Maurya/Ashoka's encouragement to other Sramanic religions, including the Ajivikas with whom Buddhists and Jainas had major contestations.Major patronage was given to Buddhism by Asoka. Asokan rule witnessed for the first time the regular use of stone as the principal medium of sculpture. Inscribing the royal order on stones and pillars was a new idea as far as the Indian subcontinent was concerned. At a time when very few people were literate such a major step by an emperor was indeed an innovative concept towards immortality. Asokan records are thus the finest specimens of epigraphic records available in the subcontinent. Asokan records are the earliest deciphered inscriptions of the Indian subcontinent (as the script of the Harappan civilization is yet to be deciphered) and are found from Afghanistan to Karnataka. The first systematic publication of the texts was done by E Hultzch in Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum Volume I in 1925. Inscriptions discovered after 1925 are not 2 included in it like Erragudi, Bombay-Sopara, Amaravati, Sannati, ten versions of minor rock edicts, Greek and Aramaic edicts. Just before the publication of this work A.C Woolner had also published Asoka Text and Glossary in 1924. Later R.G. Basak’s Asokan Edicts (1959), D.C. Sircar’s Inscriptions of Asoka (1967) followed by Asokan Studies (1979) and B.N. Mukherjee’s Studies in the Aramaic Edicts of Asoka (1984) and K.R Norman and F.R. Allchin’s, A Guide to Asokan Inscriptions (1985) are major additions to the study of inscriptions of Asoka. Latest addition to the study of Asokan records was by Harry Falk (2006). Falk’s work focuses mainly on the Asokan sites and their character and the texts have not been discussed in detail in it. Asokan inscriptions are highly typical and exceptional as no such record has been found from the Indian subcontinent later. Asoka made several recessions of the same text and got them engraved on rocks and stone pillars. Thus same or similar texts have been duplicated at such sites. These are royal proclamations. Proclamation of emperor’s moral and religious sentiments form the content of most of the records which are exhortatory in nature and are expressed in first person. He used multiple languages and dialects and scripts for incising the records. Bilingual Asokan inscriptions are known : Greek and Aramaic and Indic and Aramaic from Afghanistan. This multilingual strategy might have been derived from Achaeminid model as the Behistun Inscription of Darius c. 520 BCE, here we find the use of first person and also use of trilingual combinations i.e. Old Persian, Akkadian and Elamite. Asokan edicts can be broadly divided into two categories those engraved on rocks and those engraved on pillars. Among those engraved on rocks are Major Rock Edicts, Separate edicts, Minor Rock Edicts and Cave inscriptions. Pillar edicts on the other hand can be divided into Major Pillar Edicts and Minor Pillar Edits. The earliest ones to be engraved were the Minor Rock Edicts followed by the Major Rock Edicts. These Major Rock Edicts were a set of fourteen edicts. Latest set were the Pillar Edicts. Asokan edicts were framed in a language which is a part of a larger group of languages known as Middle Indo Aryan Dialects or MIA Dialects which are collectively referred to as Asokan Prakrits. Principal dialect is eastern variety i.e. Magadhi. All the pillar edicts and several of rock edicts are in this dialect. Clear recognition and promotion of diversities in languages and scripts are noticeable. Prakrit (several dialects), Aramaic are (Semitic) and Greek (Indo-European); Brahmi, Kharoshti, Greek and Aramaic scripts were employed and all these were used for the first time. The Employment of scripts coincides with the emerging empire. Major Rock edicts have been reported from Shahbazgarhi, Manshera, Kalsi, Girnar and Erragudi Another set of fragmentary Edicts have been reported from Sopara now preserved in the Prince of Wales Museum Mumbai and mentioned as Bompay-Sopara edict, here only fragments of Rock Edict VIII and IX have been reported. These major rock edicts when seen of the map reveal that they were placed on the borders of the Asokan empire. Similar set of major rock edicts with an omission of three edicts and inclusion of two fresh edicts are found from Dhauli and Jaugada in Odhisa and Sannati in Karnataka. These are known as Separate Rock Edicts. D.C.Sircar mentioned them as Rock Edicts XV and XVI. Minor Rock Edicts have been reported from eighteen sites and another one from Bairat in Jaipur Rahjasthan, It is preserved in the Asiatic Society Kolkata and hence known as the Calcutta Bairat Edict. At Barabar we have a set of four caves Lomash Rishi cave, Sudama cave, Karn Chaupar amnd Viswamitra jhonpri which have polished walls and three out of these four caves only three bear records of Asoka. Lomash Rishi was abandoned as a crack developed in the cave and hence it does not have any inscription. These are mainly donative 3 in character. They record the donation of the caves to Ajivikas by king Piyadasi i.e. Asoka. At the nearby Nagarjuni caves we also find the inscriptions of his grandson Dasaratha who also donated three caves to Ajivikas. Pillar Edicts are a set of six edicts preserved on Mauryan sandstone pillars at six places i.e. Topra brought to Delhi (known as the Delhi Topra Edicts), Meerut later brought to Delhi (known as the Delhi Meerut Edicts, Lauriya Araraj, Lauriya Nandangarh, Rampurva and Allahabad Kosam. Of these the Delhi Topra is the longest of the inscriptions bearing the VIIth Pillar edict of Asoka. It summarizes and restates the contents of all the other pillar edicts and also to some extent the content of the major rock edicts as well. At Allahabad Kosam Pillar contain in addition to the six principal edicts two other brief additional inscriptions. The Queen’s Edict which mentions the gifts of the king’s second queen dutiye deviye. Second one is the so called schism edict which is addressed to the mahamatras of Kausambi which refers to the punishment to be inflicted on monks or nuns who cause schisms within the Buddhist samgha. Minor Pillar edicts are reported from five places Sanchi, Sarnath. Nihgali Sagar (Nepal), Rummindei (Nepal) and Amaravati which is fragmentary in nature. The Sanchi and Sarnatha records are more extensive texts on the banishment of schismatics. At Sarnath there is an additional note on the king’s order for the preservation and propagation of the order itself.Nigali Sagar records the king;s visit to the site and his expansion of the stupa of Buddha Konakamana. Rummindei pillar inscriptions helps us to identify the place with the birth place of Buddha i.e. Lumbini as the record clearly mentions that here Buddha was born. This record also commemorates the visit of the emperor to this site. Dating the Asokan records: Asokan inscriptions are the earliest Indian epigraphs that can be dated with any certainty. These records are dated in the regnal year of the ruler to be counted from the year post coronation. Rock Edict XIII mentions a major political event 8th year, 264 BCE Pillar edict VII at Delhi Topra dated in the 27th regnal year can be dated to 245 BCE. These are the earliest records which can be dated with certain amount of certainty as there are names of five contemporary Greek rulers i.e.