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(ProQuest: ... Greek characters omitted or Cyrillic characters omitted.)
As soon as script was introduced in India the art of writing letters may have been practiced. If it was, this is not known directly from any surviving correspondence of the third century b.c., of course. Nor are letters mentioned in early literature before Kautalya, who, in his "Chapter on royal orders" (säsanädhikära II 10) describes at an uncertain date how official letters are to be written. Only by the middle of the first millennium a.d. letters are mentioned occasionally in Sanskrit dramas, mostly in passing, and in Buddhist literature, frequently, particularly in the Jätäkas. 1
Only one drama, the Mudräräksasa (V 9/10), is more explicit: one of Raksasa's letters is intercepted and opened secretly "without violating the seal."2 Luckily, the beginning of the letter is read out väcitah): svasti yathästhänam kuto'pi ko 'pi kam api purusavisesam avagamayati "Well-being! According to the right order: from somewhere somebody informs some high-ranking personality." After this summary of the address the content proper begins. This paragraph provides some vague ideas about the form of an ancient Indian letter, but only of the beginning. For, unfortunately, the end of the letter is not quoted. Epistolary literature from India, on the other hand, such as the Lekhapaddhati, begins only almost a millennium later.3
Nothing is known, at least not directly, about letters written at the time of Asoka more than half a millennium earlier than the time at which Visäkhadatta probably composed his Mudräräksasa.4 Therefore it will remain forever unknown how many, if any, letters were produced by the Maurya administration. However, given the area of the kingdom, the number of letters might have been considerable. For, according to Plutarch, already King Seleukos I Nikator (*358/4; reg. 305-281), 5 as a contemporary of Asoka' s grandfather, complained: "It is said that he used to say: If people knew how laborious only writing so many letters is and reading them, they would not pick up a crown that is thrown away"6 - though most likely there were not as many official letters read and written by Seleukos as those issued by the chancery of Pope Gregory XI (1370-1378), which churned out no less than 15,450 official letters already during the first year...