In which script are most of the inscriptions of Ashoka written?

CONCEPT: Ashoka's Major and Minor Rock Edicts and Pillar Edicts were inscribed across the Mauryan empire using different local scripts and languages, chosen so that people of each region could read them. In north, central, and eastern India, the edicts used Brahmi script (mostly to write the Prakrit language); in the empire's northwest, a small number of edicts used Kharoshthi script; and at the western frontier near Kandahar (in present-day Afghanistan), one bilingual edict used Greek and Aramaic scripts.

APPLICATION: The great majority of Ashoka's surviving inscriptions -- the Major Rock Edicts found at sites such as Girnar, Dhauli, Jaugada, and Kalsi, the Minor Rock Edicts, and the Pillar Edicts spread across the Gangetic plains and central India -- were engraved in Brahmi script. Only a limited set of edicts in the extreme northwest (Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra) used Kharoshthi, and just one bilingual edict at Kandahar used Greek and Aramaic. Numerically, Brahmi therefore accounts for most of Ashoka's inscriptions.

CONTRAST:

• Devanagari: this script had not yet come into existence in the 3rd century BCE; it developed many centuries later, around the 11th century CE, out of Brahmi-derived scripts.

• Tamil: the distinct Tamil script took shape later from an early Tamil-Brahmi variant and was not the script used for Ashoka's core-region edicts.

• Ol Chiki: this is a 20th-century script, devised in 1925 by Pandit Raghunath Murmu specifically for writing the Santali language, more than two thousand years after Ashoka's reign.

So among the given options, Brahmi script is the one that matches the script used in most of Ashoka's inscriptions.