B. N. Mukherjee

Bratindra Nath Mukherjee FRAS (1 January 1932 – 4 April 2013) was an Indian historian, numismatist, epigraphist and iconographist, known for his scholarship in central Asian languages such as Sogdian.

[4] He obtained his master's degree in Ancient Indian History and Culture from Calcutta University, learning under Sarasi Kumar Saraswati, J. N. Banerjee and R. G. Basak and did research under the guidance of Arthur Llewellyn Basham, renowned scholar and historian, to secure a doctoral degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

He continued in the United Kingdom at Cambridge University to research under Harold Walter Bailey on historical linguistics of West and Central Asia, focusing on Iranian, Saka, Saka–Khotanese and Aramaic studies.

He asserted that these edicts were translations and transliterations of Prakrit inscriptions and revealed the political intonations of Ashoka's policy of Dhamma.

[12][13] Mukherjee was a professor at Calcutta University and held the Carmichael chair of the Ancient Indian History and Culture from 1975 to 1998.