Aramaic inscription of Taxila

Aramaic inscription of Taxila
Aramaic inscription of Taxila.
Material	Portion of octagonal marble pillar.
Size	200px
Writing	Aramaic
Created	circa 260 BCE
Period/culture	3rd Century BCE
Discovered	33.7561N 72.8292E
Place	Sirkap, Taxila, Pakistan
Present location	Taxila Museum, Pakistan
class=notpageimage| Location of the 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 Indian emperor Ashoka around 260 BCE, and often categorized as one of the Minor Rock Edicts.^[1] Since Aramaic was the official language of the Achaemenid empire, which disappeared in 330 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 northwestern India, or to border populations for which Aramaic remained the normal communication language.^[2] The inscription is known as KAI 273.