Rome and the East
[eusebeia]. And this the king has felt with still greater displeasure; [that?]
such as dwelt there who were Bramenai or Sramenai, or also any others
whospendtheirlivesonpiety...ifanyofthesefollowingsuchaway
of life has died or been deported...To a study of the classical world’s relationship with Asia, the edicts and minor
inscriptions of Asoka are of greater significance than might be supposed.
It is striking enough to read an expression of Buddhist doctrines in Greek.
With the exception of the undeciphered Indus Valley Script of the third and
early second millennium, the inscriptions of Asoka are, in fact, the earliest
written documents from the Indian sub-continent. Apart from Greek and
Aramaic, the edicts were written in a set of dialects related to Sanskrit, and
called Prakrit; the balance of scholarly opinion is that the two scripts used
for the Prakrit versions, namely Kharosthi (confined to the north-west, and
always written right to left) and Brahmi (normally written left to right), both
derivedfromAramaic.^30 Thus, both the languages and scripts used by Asoka
suggest that monumental writing in India owed its origins to the influence
of the Achaemenid Empire, in which Aramaic was widely used as an offi-
cial language, and of the Seleucid Empire, in which Aramaic was still used
alongside the primary language, Greek.
Elsewhere in his edicts (in the so-called Fifth Major Rock Edict), Asoka
does indeed list Greeks as being among the peoples of his empire, and he also
refers to ‘‘the Greek king named Antiochus’’ (Antiochus II, –..). It
is unfortunate that the Greek text of Edict XIII breaks off where it does, for
here, according to the Prakrit versions, Asoka goes on to refer again to An-
tiochus, and also to other Hellenistic kings: ‘‘and beyond the realm of that
Antiochus, in the lands of the four kings named Ptolemy, Antigonus, Magas
andAlexander...’’^31
No hint of interaction between Greek thought and Buddhism appears in
any pagan classical source, and, in the surviving Greek literature, the earliest
mention of the Buddha by name is by the Christian writer Clement of Alex-
andria at the end of the second century.^32 Classical narratives of the history of
. See R. G. Salomon, ‘‘Brahmi and Kharosthi,’’ in P. T. Daniels and W. Bright, eds.,
The World’s Writing Systems(), .
. Thapar,As ́oka(n. ), . The kings are Ptolemy II Philadelphus (–..),
Antigonus Gonatas (–..), Magas of Cyrene (dates not quite certain), and (prob-
ably) Alexander of Epirus (–..).
. Clement,Stromata, , : ‘‘There are among the Indians those who believe in the
teachings of Boutta, whom because of his exceptional nobility they have honoured as a