Aramaic inscription of Taxila
The Aramaic inscription of Taxila is an inscription on a piece of marble, originally belonging to an octagonal column, discovered by Sir John Marshall in 1915 at Taxila, British India. The inscription is written in Aramaic, probably by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka around 260 BCE…
Taxila’s Aramaic inscription is the sort of footnote that only a true history junkie will cherish, tucked behind the more photogenic Dharmarajika Stupa and the battered Susan’s Tomb. The marble fragment – once part of an octagonal column – was unearthed by Sir John Marshall in 1915, and bears a terse Ashokan decree in Imperial Aramaic, a language that vanished from most of the subcontinent after Alexander’s sweep. It sits, unglamorous but legible, in the museum annex of the Taxila Museum on Main Bazaar Road; you’ll need a few minutes between the Gandhara Buddha gallery and the replica of the Jaulian Stupa to locate the low‑relief plaque labelled KAI 273. Skip the tourist‑laced “big‑rock‑edicts” tours – the guide will drone about the Mauryan empire while you stare at the same four lines of script. The best time to visit is early morning, when the museum is half‑empty and the marble catches the soft light. Allow forty minutes, note the weirdly crisp Aramaic against the backdrop of 2,600‑year‑old Gupta mosaics, and move on; the real reward is the sense that you’ve spoken to a minority audience that Ashoka bothered to address, long before the rest of India heard him.
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