In the north-western part of Ashoka's empire (at Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra), his inscriptions were written in which script?

In the north-western part of the empire, at Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra (in present-day Pakistan), Ashoka's Major Rock Edicts were written in the Kharosthi script.

About the Kharosthi script:

• It was written from right to left (like Aramaic, from which it was derived).
• It developed in the Gandhara region, which had been part of the Persian (Achaemenid) empire, where Aramaic was used.
• It was used in north-western India and Central Asia from about the 4th century BCE to the 3rd century CE.
• It was used on coins of the Indo-Greeks, Shakas, Parthians and Kushanas, along with Greek.
• Many Buddhist manuscripts in the Gandhari language were written in Kharosthi; the "Gandharan Buddhist texts", found in Afghanistan and Pakistan, are among the oldest Buddhist manuscripts.
• It gradually went out of use, and was replaced by Brahmi-derived scripts.

How it was deciphered:

It was deciphered in the 1830s, mainly by James Prinsep, Christian Lassen and others, using bilingual coins of the Indo-Greek kings, which had the king's name in Greek on one side and in Kharosthi on the other.

About Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra:

• Shahbazgarhi is in the Mardan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
• Mansehra is in the Hazara region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
• Both have all 14 Major Rock Edicts.

Scripts in Ashoka's inscriptions:

• Brahmi: used in most parts of the empire; written from left to right.
• Kharosthi: used in the north-west; written from right to left.
• Other scripts were used in the far north-west.

The Brahmi script:

It is the ancestor of most modern Indian and South-East Asian scripts.

Why not the other options?

• ✗Brahmi was used in most other parts of the empire.
• ✗Devanagari developed much later from Brahmi.
• ✗Gurmukhi was developed in the 16th century for Punjabi.