book
Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas
Thapar, Romila. Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas. 2nd ed. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Why this matters here
Romila Thapar's history of the Mauryan empire documents Ashoka's reign and the wide distribution of edicts. Before Certainty Arrives invokes her study for imperial promulgation of publicly recognizable moral standards, while its wider account of writing as portable authority is interpretive.
