Ashokan inscriptions in the northwest: script, routes and messages

Two places, separate physical records

Shahbazgarhi’s official heritage description records fourteen major edicts on two boulders in the Peshawar valley. Mansehra’s corresponding description records fourteen on three boulders near that city. Both identify right-to-left Kharoshthi writing and a third-century BCE setting. These are two physical inscription sites, not two names for a single monument. Their preservation gives a regional setting to a set of royal messages whose other versions occur elsewhere in South Asia.[1][2]

Road connections and a local written tradition

The Mansehra record places the edicts beside routes linking the northwest with Kashmir, Gilgit and Central Asia, and with Taxila to the south. That setting matters for thinking about communication beyond the capital. Its UNESCO page is a state-party Tentative List submission, rather than proof of inscription on the World Heritage List. The record supplies a useful site description without establishing how many ancient travellers stopped to read it or heard it recited.[2]

Richard Salomon identifies the Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra edicts among the early attestations of Gandhari, a Middle Indo-Aryan language. Kharoshthi is the writing system, rather than another name for the language. Distinguishing the two helps explain how a royal programme could take a regional written form without implying that every person in the surrounding landscape shared one spoken language or level of literacy.[3]

A translation is a further stage of interpretation

Dhammika’s rendering of Rock Edict 12 urges restraint in speaking about other religious traditions and encourages listening to their teachings. This is a royal prescription, not a report that mutual respect was universal. His preface also explains that unclear passages have produced different translations. Readers should therefore identify the edict, the location or version under discussion and the translator. A general English rendering can introduce the message, while a detailed claim about a northwestern spelling requires the actual regional inscription and an appropriate edition.[4]