Ancient Iran
Epigraphically recorded history in ancient Persia began dramatically with the rise of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century bce. Cyrus II the Great’s conquest of Media, Lydia, and Babylonia, Cambyses’ occupation of Egypt, and the empire’s incursions into Greece beginning during the reign of Darius I created in short order a world power destined for center stage on the international scene for the following two centuries. The international character of the empire is reflected in the frequently trilingual royal inscriptions—with Akkadian and Elamite versions in traditional logo-syllabic cuneiform, and the Old Persian text in its own simplified quasi-alphabetic system of wedge-shaped writing. The Achaemenid writing spans the time from Darius I through the end of the dynasty, which was ultimately extinguished by Alexander the Great. The empire was centered in Persia (modern Fars); but a granite stela of Darius, found near the Suez Canal, recorded in Old Persian, Elamite, Akkadian, and hieroglyphic Egyptian the opening of a canal from the Red Sea to the Nile.
The epigraphic material included rock surfaces, building walls, columns, doorways, cornices, statues, and doorknobs; bricks, plaques, plates, and tablets of clay, stone, gold, and silver; vases; weights; and seals. Almost all the longer texts were by Darius and Xerxes I; an important one of Xerxes was found on a stone tablet at Persepolis in 1967. The great Bisotun rock inscription of Darius runs to several hundred long lines in Old Persian alone, besides the Elamite and Akkadian versions. It is accompanied by 11 minor inscriptions, serving as keys to the sculpted scene of the panel, which shows Darius triumphant over the usurping impostor Gaumata and nine other rebels. The text is a self-statement of how Darius gained and consolidated his rule. It apparently had currency in the realm, apart from being tucked away on a sheer cliff wall, for a partial duplicate of the Akkadian version has been found on a dolerite (basalt) block from Babylon, and papyrus fragments from Elephantine have yielded scraps of an Aramaic edition.
From later Arsacid (Parthian) and Sasanian periods of Iranian history, there are likewise royal inscriptions that shed light on their respective eras down to the Islamic conquest in the 8th century ce, and new specimens are still being discovered.
Ancient India
India’s past became anchored in historical time and separable from legend only with the establishment of firm synchronisms with outside data. One such link is the Seleucid embassy of Megasthenes to the Mauryan king Chandragupta (Greek Sandrokottos) at Pataliputra (Greek Palimbothra; modern-day Patna) in Magadha (modern-day Bihar). The Mauryan dynasty was continued in the early 3rd century bce by Chandragupta’s son Bindusara (Amitrochates in the Greek sources) and had extended its power over much of the subcontinent. But then the Greek sources fall silent, and Indic literary tradition supplies only the usual web of timeless legendry. At this point, however, epigraphy makes a unique contribution in the form of the first authentic and datable historical documents from India, the edicts of Bindusara’s son and successor Ashoka. As a matter of epigraphic fact, Ashoka ruled all of northern India and a large portion of the south, from Taxila and beyond to Mysuru (Karnataka) and Kalinga (coast of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh). His 14 rock edicts and seven pillar edicts in numerous versions and copies, plus separate minor texts, are scattered over this expanse—in the Prakrit language of his time and in the Brahmi script, except for some northwestern examples of the Aramaic-inspired Kharoshti writing. Even a Greek-Aramaic bilingual version was found in 1958 near Kandahār in Afghanistan. Ashoka’s edicts are proclamations and ordinances in a Buddhistic spirit, designed to impart good order, morality, and moderation by the emperor’s personal enjoining and example. Particularly notable is the 13th rock edict, which bares the ruler’s pangs of conscience over the conquest of Kalinga eight years after his coronation, his continuing sorrow over the cruelties committed, and his pledge to substitute the victory of Buddhist religious law (dhamma) for all earthly conquest.
Ashoka’s edicts would rate a mere historiographic footnote for their inconsequential transitoriness, were it not that in the same breath Ashoka supplied the very synchronisms that are the main key to ancient Indian chronology. Among his western neighbors he mentioned Amtiyoge (Antiochus II Theos of Syria), Tulamaye (Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt), Antekine (Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedonia), Maka (Magas of Cyrene), and Alikasudaro (Alexander of Epirus or Alexander of Corinth). The dates of these contemporaries circumscribe the time of Ashoka’s reign; combined with the earlier Greek synchronisms, they afford a firm foundation for the correlation of Indic and Mediterranean events. The edicts of Ashoka are thus a prime example of the value of inscriptions for historiographic dating and constitute a fixed record unparalleled in ancient Indian tradition. Later periods of Indian history, such as those of the Indo-Scythian and Gupta rulers, are also represented in epigraphic documents of some historical value.
Ancient China
In China also, inscriptions are a means of separating chronological fact from historiographic legend. Non-epigraphic book composition on wood or bamboo strips had an early history in China, beginning in the later 2nd millennium bce; its scope was such that the emperor Qin Shi Huang went down in history as a book burner in 213 bce. The San Dai, or three periods of early Chinese history (Xia, c. 2070–1600 bce; Shang, c. 1600–1046 bce; Zhou and Qin, c. 1046–207 bce), were long considered by Western scholars to be purely legendary down to the early Zhou period, and the literary documents (such as the Shujing or “Classic of History”) were dismissed as compilations consisting mostly of successive overlays of little historical value. But the historicity of written records from the later Shang era is now apparent from the mass of inscribed archaeological material found especially in northern Henan province. These include, in particular, the so-called oracle bones (mostly tortoise shells and scapulae of animals), bearing incised records of royal divination. At the site of the last Shang capital, Yin, were discovered inscribed vessels of bronze, bone, pottery, jade, and stone, probably ceremonial in nature and related to official ritual uses such as ancestor worship. The script is a mixture of pictograms, word signs, and phonograms. From the ensuing Zhou era, bronze inscriptions of official provenance have likewise been found, especially records of royal largesse. Inscriptions from later periods form a steady but subsidiary source of information beside the larger, non-epigraphic written record.