Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s21.3

c11.s21.3

'The extent of Aśoka's empire may be guessed already', says Hultzsch², 'from the distribution of his rock-edicts, which it seems were engraved along the very confines of his territories. In the west they are found at Girnar on the Kathiawar Peninsula and at Sopara on the Bombay coast; in the south in the Raichur district of the Nizam's dominions and in the Chitaldroog district of the Mysore State; and in the east at Dhauli and Jaugaḍa in the Purī and Ganjam districts. The north-eastern boundary line is marked by the rock edicts at Shāhbazgarhi and Mānsehrā in the Peshāwār and Hazāra districts and at Kālsī in the Dehrā Dūn district, and it is continued by the Nigāli Sāgar and Rummindei pillars in the Nepalese Tarāi and by the Rāmpurvā pillar in the Champarān district¹. The discovery in 1929 of a fresh set of the Fourteen Rock-Edicts and a minor Rock Edict at Yerraguḍi (near Gooty) in the Kurnool district and that of fragments of Rock and Pillar edicts in Aramaic script in Laghman¹ do not materially alter our estimate of the extent of the empire as borne out by the spread of the inscriptions. But one may legitimately doubt the surmise that the rock-edicts were engraved ‘along the very confines’ of Aśoka’s territories; for tradition and probability alike suggest that the empire extended in some directions particularly in the north and north-west well beyond the extent so defined.