T.M. Krishna: On rediscovering Asoka through his edicts

THE edicts of Asoka, the third Mauryan emperor, continue to hold relevance even today. Little wonder, the historian Romila Thapar asked, “Had the Brahmi script not been deciphered what would have been the history of early India in which Asoka Maurya was absent?” Indeed, what! In Indian Cultures as Heritage: Contemporary Pasts, Romila Thapar writes: “The edicts of Emperor Asoka that we quote today as valuable heritage, were unread and ignored for over a millennium until their script was deciphered in the early nineteenth century. Xuan Zang, the Buddhist traveller from China, who travelled all through Kashmir and into the plains of India in the 7th century CE, made the same claim about Asoka.” According to her, “Though there are no Asokan edicts in Kashmir, those in neighbouring Gandhara were certainly inscribed in Kharoshthi along with Aramaic script of the Greek lands, the double use implying the local character and purpose of Kharoshthi. Indeed, from the hundreds of famous graffiti in the far north at Chilas, Gilgit and Hunza from the Saka-Kusana period to several sculpture inscriptions of the same time in Mathura, with Gandhara and Kashmir in between, Kharoshthi emerges as a regional script par excellence up till the 3rd century B.C.” Therein lies the greatest success of Asokan edicts.