Place · Ashokan inscription · India
Kālsī
The northernmost of Ashoka's major rock edicts, carved on a quartzite boulder beside the Yamuna in Dehradun district, Uttarakhand, at the foot of the Himalayan foothills — marking the mountain edge of the Mauryan empire's administrative reach. The fourteen edicts in Brahmi script of 258 BCE lay out Ashoka's dharma policy to subjects on the frontier of the Hellenistic Bactria-Gandhara zone. The edict is accompanied by a figure of an elephant with the caption 'the best elephant' — Gajatame — one of the earliest Mauryan rock-carved animal figures. Rediscovered by John Forest in 1860. The site is protected by the Archaeological Survey of India.
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Tradition
- Ashokan edicts (Brahmi, Kharosthi, Greek, Aramaic)
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 30.517, 77.847
Connections (1)
- Imperial inscription atPātaliputra
Kalsi on the Yamuna below the Himalayan foothills is the northernmost of the major rock edict sites, marking the mountain edge of Mauryan reach. The same fourteen texts appear here as at Girnar two thousand kilometres away, in the same Prakrit and the same Brahmi — a single administration issuing one document across a subcontinent and expecting it to be cut accurately at every edge of it.
On these journeys
Sources
Major Rock Edicts — Kalsi
Open Kālsī in the repository →