section_path: Sources of information/Other sources
section_name: Other sources
paragraph_text: Other sources
  
  Numismatic, sculptural, and archaeological evidence supplements research on Ashoka. Ashoka's name appears in the lists of Mauryan emperors in the various Puranas. However, these texts do not provide further details about him, as their Brahmanical authors were not patronised by the Mauryans. Other texts, such as the Arthashastra and Indica of Megasthenes, which provide general information about the Maurya period, can also be used to make inferences about Ashoka's reign. However, the Arthashastra is a normative text that focuses on an ideal rather than a historical state, and its dating to the Mauryan period is a subject of debate. The Indica is a lost work, and only parts of it survive in the form of paraphrases in later writings.
  
  The 12th-century text Rajatarangini mentions a Kashmiri king Ashoka of Gonandiya dynasty who built several stupas: some scholars, such as Aurel Stein, have identified this king with the Maurya emperor Ashoka; others, such as Ananda W. P. Guruge dismiss this identification as inaccurate.
  
  Alternative interpretation of the epigraphic evidence
  
  For Christopher I. Beckwith, Ashoka, whose name only appears in the Minor Rock Edicts, is not the same as king Piyadasi, or Devanampiya Piyadasi (i.e. "Beloved of the Gods Piyadasi", "Beloved of the Gods" being a fairly widespread title for "King"), who is named as the author of the Major Pillar Edicts and the Major Rock Edicts.
  
  Beckwith suggests that Piyadasi was living in the 3rd century BCE, was probably the son of Chandragupta Maurya known to the Greeks as Amitrochates, and only advocated for piety (" Dharma ") in his Major Pillar Edicts and Major Rock Edicts, without ever mentioning Buddhism, the Buddha, or the Sangha (the single notable exception is the 7th Edict of the Major Pillar Edicts which does mention the Sangha, but is a considered a later fake by Beckwith). Also, the geographical spread of his inscription shows that Piyadasi ruled a vast Empire, contiguous with the Seleucid Empire in the West.
  
  On the contrary, for Beckwith, Ashoka was a later king of the 1st–2nd century CE, whose name only appears explicitly in the Minor Rock Edicts and allusively in the Minor Pillar Edicts, and who does mention the Buddha and the Sangha, explicitly promoting Buddhism. The name "Priyadarsi" does occur in two of the minor edicts (Gujarra and Bairat), but Beckwith again considers them as later fabrications. The minor inscriptions cover a very different and much smaller geographical area, clustering in Central India. According to Beckwith, the inscriptions of this later Ashoka were typical of the later forms of "normative Buddhism", which are well attested from inscriptions and Gandhari manuscripts dated to the turn of the millennium, and around the time of the Kushan Empire. The quality of the inscriptions of this Ashoka is significantly lower than the quality of the inscriptions of the earlier Piyadasi.
  
  However, many of Beckwith's methodologies and interpretations concerning early Buddhism, inscriptions, and archaeological sites have been criticized by other scholars, such as Johannes Bronkhorst and Osmund Bopearachchi.