Place · Ashokan inscription · Afghanistan
Kandahar (Old Kandahar edict)
The Mauryan rock edict site at Old Kandahar, Afghanistan, where in 1958 excavators found a limestone slab carrying Ashoka's edict in Greek and Aramaic — the two prestige languages of the Hellenistic and Achaemenid-descended populations of the empire's western frontier. The bilingual records Ashoka addressing a Hellenistic and Iranian public in their own scripts around 258 BCE, offering his dharma renunciation of hunting and killing in terms borrowed from Greek philosophical vocabulary (eusebia). A later Greek-only edict was found at Kandahar in 1963. The texts are the only Ashokan edicts in languages other than Brahmi/Kharosthi Prakrit.
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Tradition
- Ashokan edicts (Brahmi, Kharosthi, Greek, Aramaic)
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 31.610, 65.710
Connections (4)
- Imperial inscription atPātaliputra
The Kandahar edict is the western limit of the inscribed empire, and it is written in Greek and Aramaic — not Prakrit in Brahmi, as everywhere else. Ashoka addressed a Hellenistic and Iranian public in their own languages, and the Greek version renders dhamma as eusebeia, piety, making a translation decision that scholars still argue about. From Pataliputra to Kandahar is about two thousand kilometres.
- Script continuity withRabatak
Kandahar's edicts are in Greek and Aramaic and Kanishka's Rabatak inscription is in Bactrian written in Greek letters — two Indian empires, four centuries apart, using the languages of the northwest to address populations for whom Indian scripts meant nothing. The Rabatak text, found in 1993, reordered the Kushan king-list, which is a reminder of how much of this period's history still rests on single inscriptions.
- Imperial inscription atAshoka
At Kandahar, on the western edge of the empire, Ashoka's edicts are cut in Greek and Aramaic rather than Prakrit in Brahmi — the only place he does this. The Greek version renders dhamma as eusebeia, piety, a translation decision scholars still argue about, and the bilingual text is addressed to a Hellenistic and Iranian public that had been there since Alexander. An Indian emperor explaining non-violence to Greek-speaking subjects in their own language is not a thing any other Indian ruler attempted.
- Site adjacencyKandahar
Old Kandahar and the Durrānī city are effectively the same place, and between them they hold the two ends of Afghan history. The mound of the old city produced Ashoka's bilingual edict in Greek and Aramaic — the westernmost Mauryan inscription known, addressing a Hellenistic population in its own languages in the third century BCE. A few kilometres away stands the tomb of Ahmad Shāh Durrānī, who was elected king here in 1747 and from whom the modern Afghan state descends.
On these journeys
Sources
Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription; Kandahar Greek Inscription
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