Asoka's inscribed pillars have been found over a wide area centered around the Mauryan capital of Pataliputra: Pakistan and Afghanistan in the northwest, in western India in Gujarat and Maharashtra, in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in the south, and in Orissa in the east. The inscriptions found on these pillars are important in a linguistic as well as an historical sense, because they supply us with some of the very earliest examples of writing in the Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts.

The stone from which the pillars are carved all seem to be quarried from the same site in Varanasi in eastern India, which in some cases involved transported the stones hundreds of miles - in some cases a thousand - to their intended locations.¹  The pillars had both religious and secular meanings; they were venerated for their Buddhist associations, but also honored as symbols of the Emperor. In this example, the text does not mention Buddhist specifically, but instead refers to the Emperor's policy of tolerance towards all religious sects and social classes.

(1) From the British Museum web site dedicated to this object.