Place · megalithic type-site · India
Brahmagiri
Also known as Ashoka edict, Brahmagiri minor edicts
The archaeological type-site in Chitradurga district, Karnataka, excavated by Mortimer Wheeler in 1947. Wheeler's Brahmagiri trench established the stratigraphic sequence linking the Neolithic (c.2500-1200 BCE), Megalithic (c.1200-200 BCE) and Early Historic (c.200 BCE-200 CE) phases of South India — the chronology that still frames Deccan and Tamil archaeology. The site preserves Ashokan Minor Rock Edicts of 258 BCE at the Brahmagiri hill. Wheeler's stratigraphy was the single most consequential excavation in post-Independence South Indian archaeology; the Brahmagiri sequence is cited in every subsequent regional report.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 14.820, 76.750
Worth knowing
Ashoka's minor edicts at Brahmagiri and Siddapura sit beside the megalithic sequence Wheeler used to date the south.
Connections (5)
- Contemporary capital withInamgaon
Brahmagiri and Inamgaon are the two excavations that built the Deccan's prehistoric chronology: Wheeler's trenches at Brahmagiri in 1947 gave the stratigraphic sequence linking neolithic, megalithic and early historic layers, and Inamgaon gave the most completely excavated chalcolithic village in India, with house plans, granaries and a long climatic story ending in abandonment. Between them they turned Deccan prehistory from a collection of finds into a sequence.
- In the same set asHire Benakal
Hire Benakal, on a hill above the Tungabhadra, is India's largest megalithic site — hundreds of dolmens of the first millennium BCE with rock paintings alongside — and Brahmagiri is where Wheeler established the sequence that dates such monuments and connects them to the neolithic before and the early historic after. The Deccan megaliths are the archaeology of the people the Ashokan southern edicts were addressed to.
- Succession in timeBhīmbetkā
Bhimbetka's rock shelters were identified in 1957 by V.S. Wakankar, who had seen the hills from a train, and Brahmagiri's stratigraphy was published a decade earlier. The two mark the ends of Indian prehistory as a discipline: one gave a painted sequence running back to the Mesolithic and possibly much further, the other gave the framework of dated layers into which everything else had to fit.
- Contemporary capital withAdichanallur
Brahmagiri gave the chronology and Adichanallur gave the material: the stratified neolithic to early historic sequence in one Karnataka hillside, and a Tamil urn cemetery whose gold, iron and inscribed pottery fill a museum. Both are being redated — Adichanallur very contentiously, since earlier dates for its inscribed sherds would make Tamil-Brahmi older than the Ashokan Brahmi it is usually derived from, which is a politically loaded conclusion.
- Imperial inscription atMaski
Brahmagiri and Maski are both Deccan neolithic and megalithic sites with Ashokan minor rock edicts on them, which is what allows the southern Iron Age sequence to be dated absolutely rather than only relatively. The Maski edict of 1915 is also the one that named the emperor as Ashoka and connected the inscriptions to the Ashoka of the Buddhist chronicles.
On these journeys
Sources
Brahmagiri excavation report, Wheeler 1947
Open Brahmagiri in the repository →