Talk:Edicts of Ashoka

message: I've found a number of translations of the various Ashoka Edicts, but haven't yet found which specific edict was written in Greek and Aramaic - can anyone here point me in the right direction? Thanks, Nightngle (nightngle@yahoo.com)
:Edict 13 was bilingual, written in Greek and Aramaic, the others use Indian languages. PHG 12:03, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Correction. Edict 13 and 5 were found in today's Afghanistan, but were written in Prakrit. The bilingual (Greek-Aramaic) Kandahar inscrition seems to be a seperate document, also by Ashoka, although I cannot find a transcript at this point.PHG 02:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Specific Edict reference 

message: When you read the Asoka Edicts, there is no evidence he was a Buddhist at all.  The only Edict where Asoka actually mentions Buddha, the Minor Edict 3, is clearly a forgery. In Minor Edict #3 at Bairat, unlike all the other Edicts, it lacks the standard "Beloved-of-the-God" phrase, and its greating ("saluting the Sangha and wishing them good health"S. Dhammika trans @ www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html) is unlike any other Edict.  Also, the references to specific Buddhist teachings and text unlike any other Edict makes it clearly a forgery. 
The only other Edict that specifically ties Asoka with Buddhism is the Minor Pillar Edit at Lumbini.  But unlike all the other Edicts, Asoka is not speaking (he is only refered to in the 3rd person - "He had a stone figure", not the first person "I commanded" that you would have found on all the other Edicts, included the forged Minor Edict at Bairat. But at least this forger got the "Beloved of the Gods" phrase right, unlike the Bairat Edict.  After you have eliminated these 2 Edicts, which clearly seem to forgeries, there is no specific evidence that Asoka was actually a Buddhist, or even knew of Buddha. The word "Dharma" is not a uniquely Buddhist term, and none of the other concepts and ideas in the genuine Asoka Edicts are uniquely Buddhist. Even the Wikipedia article recognized the absence of key and unique Buddist concepts.  
The fact that Buddha or uniquely Buddist ideas or concepts are never mentioned in any of the Asoka Edicts that are not suspect argues strongly that Asoka was not a Buddhist.  If Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, never mentioned Jesus we would be equally suspicious that Constantine was ever a Christian. A religion claiming an prestigious figure in history as one of their is not unknown.  Alexander the Great (Iskandar) was sometimes treated in Islam as a muslim, although that tradition has fallen out of favor as the knowledge of the real history of Alexandar increased.  Like the Christians and Muslims, the Buddhist many centuries after Asoka time co-opted the famous Asoka as one of their own, a fact made much easier by the India's general lack of ancient Indian written histories as compared with the west - ancient India had no Herodotus, no Tacticus.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.51.147.97 (talk) 00:44, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Asoka Edicts don't seem to prove he was a Buddhist  

message: The following map could be used to illustrate the article. If someone would like to introduce it in the article, please do. PHG (talk) 06:05, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed; someone had actually changed all instances of Ashoka to Asoka which broke the image. Shell babelfish 06:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Shell. PHG (talk) 19:47, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Map

message: A nice image of the Junagadh rock, on which fourteen of the Edicts of Ashoka  can be found. Feel free to insert in the article. PHG (talk) 18:54, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Junagadh rock inscription

message: The line given in third para "The inscriptions found in the eastern part of India were written in the Magadhi language, using the Brahmi script. In the western part of India, the language used is closer to Sanskrit, using the Kharoshthi script, one extract of Edict 13 in the Greek language, and one bilingual edict written in Greek and Aramaic". in which you have told that inscription found in western part of Indian is closer to sankrit, how can it be because the sankrit was found later in 11th Century and the inscriptions found was in 2 century BCE, so kindly analyse that....GentalMan (talk) 10:03, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  About the Scripts 

message: Ashoka used the medium of Edicts to propagate his own policy of Dhamma not Buddhism. Wondering the one who wrote this article and the other one who created(If not same). Just an another attempt to manipulate history. How could i say that? read this one, there's around 80 references cited. This article should be removed from search directory from current effect. Needs to re-written presenting reliable sources. AnupMehra ✈ 19:41, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: The article needs to re-written as a whole

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Edicts of Ashoka. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20060715001827/http://www.afghanan.net:80/afghanistan/mauryans.htm to http://www.afghanan.net/afghanistan/mauryans.htm
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Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 21:08, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: , as you are interested in political history of India and impressed by your quality work, I invite you to rewrite this and other associated articles. This topic is very important in historical context and read by around 400 peoples a day. the current version is tagged for a long time without much improvement. The current version looks like an article on Buddhism, not on edicts. Regards,-Nizil (talk) 06:07, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Nearly all the Maurya-related articles are in bad shape. They have been on my to-do list for quite some time, but I don't have much time on hands. Maybe try dropping a note at WT:IND. utcursch | talk 13:24, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

text: , thank you for work on edicts recently. More work is needed. Please keep going. One question which comes to my mind is: Edicts are the "text of inscription" or the "whole rock/pillar with an inscription"? This article deals with the text of inscription while Minor Rock Edicts deals with inscription+its rock (so location etc. is listed). Another issue is much-used image: :File:EdictsOfAshoka.jpg which looks incomplete. We need a better and updated image. Regards,-Nizil (talk) 14:40, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hi Nizil Shah. Thank you for your comment. I usually try to go progressively from concrete facts to generalizations. I have so far developed the facts on Minor Rock Edicts, Major Rock Edicts, Minor Pillar Edicts, Major Pillar Edicts, Barabar caves inscriptions etc... and my next step is indeed to develop the synthetic general article Edicts of Ashoka. I just need some time to digest all this, but it is coming... Especially, the fact that someone is showing interest is an additional motivation!! Thank you!! पाटलिपुत्र (talk) 16:26, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewriting needed