About 500 B. C., the Punjaub was invaded by the Persians under Darius, and during the remaining period of the Achæmenian kings continued a satrapy of Persia. After the conquests of Alexander, and later, of the decline of Greek rule, this province was restored to India. About 251 B. C., Asoka, then king of India, an earnest and devout believer in Buddha, ordered certain edicts to be inscribed in various parts of his empire. These are known as the fourteen edicts of Asoka. The type of the alphabetic character employed in the various localities differs. Those used at Kapur di giri are in a cursive script from the Aramean, and are often designated “the Bactrian alphabet,” from its close relationship to these early Iranian forms. Of this, Dr. Taylor says: “The Kapur di giri record must be regarded as an isolated monument of a great Bactrian alphabet, in which the Zoroasterian books and an extensive literature were in all probability conserved.” ----- Footnote 5: This use of the word Zend is incorrect as referring to the language in which the works of Zoroaster appear. There is no Zend language. CHAPTER XI. FOR monumental purposes, the Persian cuneiform remained the official script of the empire conjointly with the Semitic Scythian cuneiform until the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great, about 334 B. C., with which the period of the Achæmenids closed. Immediately following this, the use of the Greek alphabet appears on coins and inscriptions, and this continued during the Greek domination in Persia under the successors of Alexander. The early Arsacids, the Parthian kings who brought an end to the rule of the Greeks in Persia, used also for a time the Greek alphabet for monumental records and numismatic legends. This, however, only lasted for a brief period, for a little later on we find that the Greek letters have given way to a variety of the Aramean alphabet, which evidently had been in general use for a long period as a cursive script. This special variety of the Aramean belongs to a group of alphabets known as Pehlevi, and is the oldest of the group. The name Pehlevi is derived from the word Parthivi, signifying Parthian. It continued, however, to be applied not only to the alphabet which first appears in the early period of Parthian domination in Persia, but also to the later forms that developed under the Sassanian kings who succeeded the Arsacids, or Parthian kings. The so called Zend alphabet was the latest of the Pehlevi, and appears during the later years of the Sassanian empire. Although the latest development of the Persian scripts, the Zend alphabet represents the most ancient form of Persian speech.