Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c10.13

c10.13

Lastly, there can be no doubt that, in carving his precepts upon rocks, Ashoka was once more adapting a Persian precedent. The Bisutūn or Behistūn rock-inscription of Darius I dates from c. 518 B.C.; there is in India no precursor to the rock-edicts cut at the bidding of Ashoka in and after 257 B.C. True that, save for an occasional formula, nothing could be more unlike the commemorative and administrative records of the proud Persian despots than the gentle exhortations of the Buddhist emperor. But yet again, as so often, we are confronted with the transmutation of a manifestly inherited idea.