Which one of the following present day territories was outside the limits of Ashoka's empire?

Correct — A, Brahmaputra valley, Assam. The Mauryan empire is mapped from Ashoka's own inscriptions, and nothing Mauryan has ever come to light in the Brahmaputra valley — no edict, no Mauryan-period administrative record, nothing. The country later called Kamarupa enters the record of an all-India power only in the fourth century CE, in Samudragupta's Allahabad pillar inscription, and even there it is a frontier kingdom that pays homage rather than a province that is ruled. That is six centuries after Ashoka. Each of the other three is inside the line. Baluchistan falls within the territories Seleucus Nikator surrendered to Chandragupta Maurya — Arachosia, Gedrosia, Aria and the Paropamisadae — and Ashoka's bilingual Greek and Aramaic edict at Kandahar, further north-west again, shows the empire administering country well beyond the Indus. North Bengal is settled by the Mahasthan inscription from Bogra district in Bangladesh, an order in Mauryan Brahmi from the city of Pundranagara about relief grain in a time of distress, which is administration, not influence. The Kashmir valley has no edict, but Kalhana's Rajatarangini states that Ashoka ruled Kashmir and founded Srinagari, and Xuanzang records a local tradition of Ashokan stupas — which is why standard maps of the empire include it. Assam has no such claim of any kind, and that is the discrimination the question is testing.

• (b)Baluchistan — Inside the empire. Its western frontier is fixed by the provinces Seleucus ceded to Chandragupta, and Ashoka's Greek and Aramaic edict at Kandahar shows Mauryan authority operating still further out.
• (c)North Bengal — Inside, and on the strongest evidence of the three. The Mahasthan Brahmi inscription at Pundranagara, in Bogra district of Bangladesh, is a Mauryan-period administrative order about grain relief.
• (d)Kashmir valley — Usually shown inside. No edict has been found in the valley, but Kalhana's Rajatarangini credits Ashoka with ruling Kashmir and founding Srinagari, and the tradition of Ashokan stupas there is old enough to be reported by Xuanzang.

The extent of Ashoka's empire is reconstructed from the find-spots of his inscriptions, from the places the edicts themselves name, and from a small amount of later testimony. Rock edicts run from Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra in the north-west to Girnar in the west, Dhauli and Jaugada in Odisha and Erragudi in Andhra Pradesh; pillars stand across the Ganga plain; minor edicts reach Maski, Brahmagiri and Gavimath in Karnataka. The edicts also name the peoples on the far side of the border — the Cholas, Pandyas, Satyaputras and Keralaputras to the south, and the Hellenistic kings further west — so the sources define both what was inside and what was not.

The useful habit this question rewards is asking, for each territory, what the evidence actually is. Two of the options rest on inscriptions found on the ground, one rests on a twelfth-century chronicle, and one rests on nothing at all — and the ranking is what decides the answer, not a general sense of how big the empire was. It is also worth being precise about what an empire boundary meant. The Mauryan state was densest around Magadha and along the highways, thinner in the forested tracts between, so 'inside the empire' describes a claim to authority and a network of officials rather than a continuously administered surface. The north-east is not merely thinly held in Ashoka's record; it is absent from it.

• No Ashokan inscription or Mauryan-period record has been found in the Brahmaputra valley.
• Kamarupa first appears in the record of an all-India power in Samudragupta's Allahabad pillar inscription of the fourth century CE, as a frontier kingdom paying homage.
• Seleucus Nikator ceded Arachosia, Gedrosia, Aria and the Paropamisadae to Chandragupta Maurya, which places Baluchistan inside the empire.
• Ashoka's Kandahar edict is in Greek and Aramaic — the empire's north-western administration worked in the languages of that region.
• The Mahasthan Brahmi inscription at Pundranagara, in Bogra district of Bangladesh, records a relief order in grain and is the standard evidence for Mauryan north Bengal.
• Kalhana's Rajatarangini credits Ashoka with the rule of Kashmir and with founding Srinagari; no edict has been found in the valley itself.

• Assuming the empire reached the whole of the north-east because it reached Bengal; the evidence stops well short of the Brahmaputra.
• Treating Kashmir as outside because no edict has been found there — the claim rests on Kalhana and on the stupa tradition instead.
• Confusing the empire's limits with the limits of Ashoka's diplomacy; the edicts name the Cholas, Pandyas and the Hellenistic kings precisely because they were outside it.

As an odd-one-out on territory like this, as a site-to-state match on the edicts, or as a statements item on what the edicts reveal about the empire's neighbours.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Mahasthan Brahmi inscription, evidence of Mauryan administration in north Bengal, records an order concerning which of the following?

  • (a)Construction of a stupa
  • (b)Relief in grain during distress
  • (c)The appointment of Dhamma-mahamatras
  • (d)A land grant to Brahmanas

  Answer(b) Relief in grain during distress — the order concerns supplies from the store at Pundranagara.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Ashoka's edicts at Kandahar are written in which pair of languages?

  • (a)Greek and Aramaic
  • (b)Prakrit and Tamil
  • (c)Sanskrit and Persian
  • (d)Pali and Bactrian

  Answer(a) Greek and Aramaic — the languages of the empire's north-western territories.