The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c29.37

v1.c29.37

The chronology of the reign is fixed within wide limits by the mention in the thirteenth Rock Edict of ‘the Yona King Antiochus and beyond that Antiochus to where dwell the four kings severally named Ptolemy (Philadelphus of Egypt, 285–247 B.C.), Antigonus (Gonatas of Macedon, 278–239), Magas (of Cyrene, died 258), and Alexander (of Epirus, 272–258?).’ The fact that these are all supposed to be reigning makes it unlikely that the edict was issued long after the year 258 B.C., when one, if not two, of them died. A prior limit of any value does not seem to be supplied by the passage, inasmuch as Antiochus Theos, whose reign began in 261 B.C., was preceded by a sovereign, his father, of like name. The omission of the Bactrian ruler Diodotus, whose independence of the Seleucid empire dates from about 250 B.C., confirms the inference that the edict is not long posterior to the year 258. Adopting 258–7 as its provisional date, and accepting the arguments which assign it to the fourteenth year, we arrive at 270 B.C. as the latest year for the coronation: but plainly nothing in the calculation forbids an earlier date. That the coronation was posterior by four years to the actual beginning of the reign is affirmed by the Ceylon tradition and perhaps also indirectly implied by the same: which would give the year 274 b.c. as the latest possible for Açoka’s accession. But this may reasonably be suspected as an invention made in the interest of a chronological system¹. A provisional chronological scheme of the reign might then take shape as follows: