ASHOKAN ROCK EDICTS OF KARNATAKA
Karnataka is one of the
important repositories of the rock edicts of Ashoka in India. They demarcate
the southern boundaries of the empire of Ashoka, the third king of the Mourya
dynasty who ruled between 272-232 B.C. His inscriptions in Karnataka are
located in Brahmagiri, Siddapura and Jatinga Rameshvara in Chitradurga
district, Koppala in Koppala district, Udeogolam and Nittur in Bellary district
and Maski in Raichur district. In all, there are eleven rock edicts found in
Karnataka. All of them are written in the Prakrit language and Brahmi script.
The inscription at Maski is one of the two in the whole country that mention
Ashoka by name. He is called ‘Devanam Priya’ in others.
The edicts in Koppal are found on hillocks called
Gavimatha and Palkigundu where as the one at Siddapura is found on ‘Emmetammana
Gundu’.
These inscriptions are essentially meant to propagate
the tenets of Buddhism and share the experiences of the King. However they have
become important documents that delineate contemporary life and the conflicts
faced by king Ashoka. They contain many mores and taboos that relate to our
behaviour with our elders, relatives and friends. Therefore they assume
cultural significance.
The comments made bay Romila Thaper the famous
historian about the rock edicts of Karnataka are very interesting: “The edicts inscribed on rock surfaces in Karnataka were
many, for it was a gold-bearing area that appears to have been worked by the
Mauryan state. Curiously this was a Dravidian-speaking area with no prior
script, yet the edicts are all composed in Prakrit—at this time a north Indian
Indo-Aryan language—and engraved in Brahmi. The officers were expected to read
out the edicts and translate them to the local population. No attempt was made
to render the edicts into the local language as was done in the north-west with
Greek and Aramaic, perhaps because there was no local script. In the political
assessment of the region it was probably less important than the north-west,
being an area of clans and chiefdoms rather than states and kingdoms. The
intention may have been to make literacy a statement of power in an oral
society and this perhaps is how the inscriptions were also viewed.”