Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/131

129 Asoka inscriptions, excepting those at Mânsahra and Shâhbâzgarhi, is an ancient form of the Brâhmî script, written from left to right, and the parent of the modern Devanâgarî and allied alphabets. The alphabetical forms used in the different inscriptions vary to some extent in details.

Two copies of the Fourteen Edicts were published at places on the Western coast. The fragment found at Sopârâ, in the Thâna District, to the north of Bombay, consisting of only a few Words from the eighth edict, is enough to show that a copy of the set of documents once existed there. Sopâra, still a prosperous country town (N. lat. 19° 25’, E. long. 72° 48’), was an important port and mart under the name of Sopâraka, Sûpâraka, or Shurpâraka in ancient times for many centuries, and contained some notable Hindu and Buddhist edifices. At one time the sea appears to have come up to the walls of the town, but the channel has been silted up for ages

The famous Girnar version, ﬁrst described by Colonel Tod in 1822, lay buried in dense forest and might never have come to light had not a local notable made a causeway through the jungle for the