Aramaic Inscription of Laghman

Aramaic inscription of Laghman
Aramaic inscription of Laghman
Material	Natural stone.
Writing	Aramaic
Created	circa 260 BCE
Period/culture	3rd Century BCE
Discovered	34°35′05″N 70°11′00″E / 34.5846°N 70.1834°E / 34.5846; 70.1834Coordinates: 34°35′05″N 70°11′00″E / 34.5846°N 70.1834°E / 34.5846; 70.1834
Place	Laghman Province, Afghanistan
Present location	Laghman Province, Afghanistan

Location of the Aramaic inscription of Laghman

Laghman valley.

The Aramaic inscription of Laghman, also called the Laghman I inscription to differentiate from the discovered later, is an inscription on a slab of natural rock in the area of Laghmân, Afghanistan, written in Aramaic by the Indian emperor Ashoka about 260 BCE, and often categorized as one of Minor Rock Edicts of Ashoka.^[1][2] This inscription was published in 1970 by André Dupont-Sommer. Since Aramaic was an official language of the Achaemenid Empire, and reverted to being just its vernacular tongue in 320 BCE with the conquests of Alexander the Great, it seems that this inscription was addressed directly to the populations of this ancient empire still present in this area, or to border populations for whom Aramaic remained the language used in everyday life.^[3]

Epigraphical context[]

The chance discovery by two Belgian anthropologists of this inscription in 1969 is one of a set of similar inscriptions in Aramaic or Greek (or both together), written by Asoka. In 1915, Sir John Marshall had discovered the Aramaic Inscription of Taxila, followed in 1932 by the Pul-i-Darunteh Aramaic inscription. In 1958 the famous Bilingual Kandahar Inscription, written in Greek and Aramaic was discovered, and in 1963 the Greek Edicts of Ashoka, again in Kandahar. In the same year 1963 and again in Kandahar, an inscription in "Indo-Aramaic" known as the Kandahar Aramaic inscription or Kandahar II was found, in which the Indian Prakrit language and the Aramaic language alternate, but using only the Aramaic script. The Aramaic parts translate the Indian parts transcribed in the Aramaic alphabet. A few years after this description was discovered, in 1973, the followed.^[4]

The inscription[]

The text of the Aramaic Inscription of Laghman has been transliterated into the Latin alphabet and translated as follows:^[3]