Thus, the Achaemenid bureaucracy had continued to function under the Mauryas. The early inscriptions of northwestern India, of which the oldest are the Aśokan edicts, are written in the so-called kharoṣṭhī script, clearly derived from Aramaic writing. The names of two Aśokan officials, who were natives from the northwest or from Iran, are known. In Brahmagiri, at the end of Minor Rock Edict I, we read Capaḍena likhite (in brāhmī script) lipikareṇa (in kharoṣṭhī script), “written by Capada, the scribe.” The inscription of Rudradāman I at Junāgaḍh in Surāṣṭra has preserved for us the remembrance of Tuṣāspha, yavanarāja, i.e., “Iranian king,” of Aśoka Maurya, who had brought improvements to a great dam built there under Candragupta. The Aśokan inscriptions bear traces of Iranian influences probably transmitted through that bureaucracy. In the expression dhaṃmalipi “text of the dharma,” by which Aśoka designates his edicts, lipi is a borrowing from Iranian dipi “writing,” with l– by analogy with Sanskrit LIP “to smear” and LIKH “to write;” dipi is even found in the northwestern copies, Shāhbāzgaṛhī and Mānsehrā (dhramadipi), where one can also note many instances of Iranian nipiš instead of Indian LIKH “to write” of the other copies. The formulaic parallels between Aśoka’s inscriptions and the Achaemenid ones have also been noted (E. Sénart, Inscriptions de Piyadasi, Paris, 1881-1886, II, pp. 296-97), but these are sentences too common to be significant by themselves. We should not exclude the possibility that Aśoka was consciously imitating the example of the great Achaemenid kings having his edicts engraved on rocks and mountains.

There is no architecture built of freestone in India before the Maurya epoch; its appearance is, in all probability, tied to the coming in India of Iranian architects and handworkers who were deprived of employment by the disappearance of the Achaemenid empire (M. Wheeler, Flames over Persepolis, London, 1968, pp. 127-45). This influence is very clear in Pāṭaliputra/Patna where in 1912/13 the ruins of a palace attributed to Candragupta, but which could equally well be attributed to his successors Bindusāra or Aśoka, were discovered. A large hypostyle hall has been uncovered that recalls the Achaemenid palaces (apadāna). Similarly, the so-called Aśokan columns, many of which were erected after Aśoka, present a complex melange of Iranian influences (material, polishing of the stone, elements of the capital) and of Indian elements (monolithic shafts, method of erection of the columns, recomposition of the capitals, called, for that reason, Indo-Persepolitan, symbolism of the monument; J. Irwin, Burlington Magazine 115, November 1973, pp. 706-20; 116, December 1974, pp. 712-27; 117, October 1975, pp. 631-43; 118, November 1976, pp. 734-53). Some art historians even see the hand of Hellenistic carvers in the most beautiful of these monuments (especially Sārnāth).

During the reign of Aśoka, Iran was under the sway of the Seleucid (Greek) rulers Antiochus Theos (261-247) and Seleucus II Kallinikos (246-226). Antiochus is named twice in Aśoka’s inscriptions. According to Rock Edict II, Aśoka sent Antiochus and the kings who were his neighbors medical treatments for animals and men, medicinal plants, roots and fruits. According to Rock Edict XIII, he succeeded in converting him to the politic of Dharma. It is to be noted that from his point of view that surely meant that the Seleucid king recognized Aśoka’s suzerainty (G. Fussman, Annales ESC, 1982, p. 628). In any case, we cannot doubt that the relations between the Indian and the Hellenistic worlds were very close under Aśoka. Thanks to the inscriptions of Kandahar, we moreover know that in Arachosia, an historically Iranian territory, a Greek (Aśoka yona, Sanskrit Yavana < Ionian, Greek Iáwōn “Ionian”) colony was established, important both by reason of its numbers and its politico-economic influence. It was for the sake of this colony, established there since the time of Alexander, that at least Rock Edicts XII and XIII had been translated into Greek and that a resume of the first Rock Edicts had been drawn up in Greek. The literary quality of these texts proves that the Greeks of Kandahar had remained in constant contact with the Mediterranean world; this contact could only have occurred through the intermediary of Hellenistic Iran. Neither can it be doubted that the Greek community in Kandahar played an important role in the relations between Hellenistic Iran and Maurya India. From this community Aśoka recruited his envoys to the Hellenistic world, or those who guided them and served them as interpreters (D. Schlumberger and L. Robert, JA, 1958, pp. 5 and 12-13).

It can be assumed that the contacts between Iran and India under Aśoka did not stop there, but there is no evidence of commercial relations between these two empires, although hoards of punch-marked coins dating from Maurya times have been found in Bactria (Aï Khanoum/Āy Ḵānom and the Oxus temple in Taḵt-e Sangīn): These hoards are best explained as parts of the booty made in India by the Greek rulers of Bactria and brought back home. It is not impossible that Greek or Hellenized Iranian artisans came to look for jobs in India (M. Wheeler, loc. cit.), but this can not be proved at present. The square and apparently regular plan of Śiṣupālgaṛh in Orissa is often attributed to Hellenistic influences coming through Iran, but the town has not been sufficiently excavated to allow certainty; it is not even clear that it was founded in Maurya times.

The Singhalese chronicles also report that under Aśoka, eighteen years after his coronation, the Buddhist vibhajyavādin monks of Pāṭaliputra, Aśoka’s capital, sent the arhant Mahārakkhita to convert the Yonaka-loka “the Greeks,” i.e., Arachosia and perhaps the Iranian countries situated further to the west. He is supposed to have preached the Kālakārāmasuttanta (Aṅguttara-nikāya, ed. Morris and Hardy, Pali Text Society, London, 1885-1910, II, pp. 24-26), converted 170,000 (or 137,000) people and ordained 10,000 monks. It is impossible to know whether, in this legend, everything is anachronistic and exaggerated, or whether the first Buddhist establishments in Kandahar effectively go back to the Maurya period. In any case, the only stūpa and Buddhist monastery ever found in Kandahar (G. Fussman, Arts Asiatiques 13, 1966, pp. 37-56) can not in their present state be attributed to so early a date (S. W. Helms, Afghan Studies 2, 1979, pp. 2-4; ibid., 3-4, p. 14). At the same time, according to the same sources, a Greek or an Iranian, Yonaka Dhammarakkhita, converted the Aparāntaka (western coast of India) (E. Lamotte, Histoire du bouddhisme indien I, Louvain, 1958, pp. 320-38).