The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c7.s1.39

c7.s1.39

Pre-eminent among inscriptions of a special character are Asoka's edicts, or sermons on stone, which form a class by themselves; no other sovereign having imitated his practice of engraving ethical exhortations on the rocks. Equally peculiar is the record on tables of stone of two Sanskrit plays at Ajmēr and of a third at Dhār. Also at Dhār on the pillars of the Bhoja Sāla, an old grammar-school, *c.* a. d. 1150, are two curious inscriptions—one 'a chart of the Sanskrit alphabet', the other a table of verbal terminations from the *Katantra*. They are engraved *Sarpabandha*, 'in the form of intertwining serpents with their bodies twisted lengthwise and cross-wise, leaving oblong spaces within for letters.'¹