The Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of more than thirty inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as on boulders and cave walls, attributed to Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan Empire, who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from 268 to 232 BCE. The inscriptions are dispersed across modern-day India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan and Pakistan and provide the first tangible evidence of Buddhism. They are the earliest written and datable texts from India, and because they were inscribed on stone rather than handed down orally like the earlier Vedic texts, they survive exactly as they were originally carved.
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