The Aramaic Inscription of Taxila is an inscription on a piece of marble, originally belonging to an octagonal column, discovered by

Sir John Marshall Sir John Hubert Marshall (19 March 1876, Chester, England – 17 August 1958, Guildford, England) was an English archaeologist who was Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India from 1902 to 1928. He oversaw the excavations of Ha ...

in 1915 at

Taxila Taxila or Takshashila (; sa, तक्षशिला; pi, ; , ; , ) is a city in Punjab, Pakistan. Located in the Taxila Tehsil of Rawalpindi District, it lies approximately northwest of the Islamabad–Rawalpindi metropolitan area and ...

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...

. The inscription is written in

Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...

, probably by the Indian emperor

Ashoka Ashoka (, ; also ''Asoka''; 304 – 232 BCE), popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was the third emperor of the Maurya Empire of Indian subcontinent during to 232 BCE. His empire covered a large part of the Indian subcontinent, ...

around 260 BCE, and often categorized as one of the

Minor Rock Edicts The Minor Rock Edicts of Ashoka (r.269-233 BCE) are rock inscriptions which form the earliest part of the Edicts of Ashoka, and predate Ashoka's Major Rock Edicts. These are the first edicts in the Indian language of Emperor Ashoka, written in th ...

.Asoka by Radhakumud Mookerj
p.275
/ref> Since Aramaic was the official language of the

Achaemenid empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest em ...

, which disappeared in 330 BCE with the conquests of

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, wikt:Ἀλέξανδρος, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Maced ...

, it seems that this inscription was addressed directly to the populations of this ancient empire still present in northwestern India, or to border populations for which Aramaic remained the normal communication language.A new Aramaic inscription of Asoka found in the Laghman Valley (Afghanistan), André Dupont-Sommer Proceedings of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres Year 1970 114-
p.173
/ref> The inscription is known as KAI 273.

Related inscriptions

The discovery of this inscription was followed by that of several other inscriptions in Aramaic or Greek (or both), written by Asoka. The most famous are the

Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription The Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription, also known as the Kandahar Edict of Ashoka and less commonly as the Chehel Zina Edict, is an inscription in the Greek and Aramaic languages that dates back to 260 BCE and was carved by the Mauryan e ...

, written in Greek and Aramaic, or the

Kandahar Greek Edict of Ashoka The Kandahar Greek Edicts of Ashoka are among the Major Rock Edicts of the Indian Emperor Ashoka (reigned 269-233 BCE), which were written in the Greek language and Prakrit language. They were found in the ancient area of Old Kandahar (known as Z ...

, also found in

Kandahar Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a List of cities in Afghanistan, city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population ...

. In 1932 another inscription in Aramaic was discovered in the Laghman Valley at Pul-i-Darunteh, then in 1963 an inscription in "Indo-Aramaic" alternating the Indian language and the Aramaic language, but using only the Aramaic script, the Aramaic parts translating the Indian parts transcribed in the Aramaic alphabet, also found in Kandahar. Finally, another inscription was found in Laghman, the

Aramaic Inscription of Laghman The Aramaic inscription of Laghman, also called the Laghman I inscription to differentiate from the Laghman II inscription discovered later, is an inscription on a slab of natural rock in the area of Laghmân, Afghanistan, written in Aramaic by ...

Text of the inscription

The text of the inscription is very fragmentary, but it has been established that it contains twice, lines 9 and 12, the mention of MR'N PRYDRŠ ("our lord

Priyadasi Priyadasi, also Piyadasi or Priyadarshi (Brahmi: 𑀧𑀺𑀬𑀤𑀲𑀺 ''piyadasi'', Kharosthi: 𐡐𐡓𐡉𐡃𐡓𐡔 ''Prydrš''), was the name of a ruler in ancient India, or simply an honorific epithet which means "He who regards others ...

"), the characteristic title used by Ashoka.A new Aramaic inscription of Asoka discovered in Kandahar (Afghanistan), Dupont-Sommer, André, Records of the sessions of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres Year 1966 110-
p.448
/ref> File: SirkapCity.JPG, Ruins of the city of

Sirkap Sirkap (Urdu and pnb, ) is the name of an archaeological site on the bank opposite to the city of Taxila, Punjab, Pakistan. The city of Sirkap was built by the Greco-Bactrian king Demetrius after he invaded modern-day Pakistan around 180 BC. ...

. File: Aramaic_inscription_from_Taxila_JRAS.jpg, Another image of the inscription. File: Sirkap Aramaic inscription 4th century BC.jpg, Another image of the inscription

References

{{Gandhara 3rd-century BC works Archaeology in Pakistan Edicts of Ashoka Aramaic inscriptions KAI inscriptions

Related inscriptions

Text of the inscription

See also

References