Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s36.4

c11.s36.4

Let us now turn to details and consider the content of Aśoka's Dharma and the means he employed for its propagation. The method of publishing and popularising administrative orders and royal proclamations by having them engraved on rock-faces was well known to the imperial administration of Persia under the Achaemenids, and Aśoka's adoption of the same method for the propagation of Dharma—he calls his inscriptions Dharma-lipis—was doubtless inspired by familiarity with that practice. The preamble of many of Aśoka's edicts, often repeated in the body of edicts themselves to introduce important statements, viz. ‘Thus speaks king Devānāmpriya Priyadarśin’, and the abrupt changes in the style of address from the third person to the first, are strongly reminiscent of the Achaemenid inscriptions; the words *dipi* and *nipiṣṭa* of Aśoka's edicts are evidently taken from the Ancient Persian language; Tushāspa who, as we learn from an inscription of Rudradāman, was Aśoka's governor of Girnār, was doubtless a Persian, and might be, there were several other Persian officials like him in Aśoka's service particularly in the North-West which had been under Persian occupation for a considerable time before the coming of Alexander. The Kharoshṭhī alphabet and the Persepolitan capital of the Aśoka columns also came from Persia¹.