Buddhism

1200

Almost everything vivid about Ashoka's life comes from Buddhist legends written centuries later; his own edicts, the only contemporary evidence, say far less.

Almost everything known about the king who built Angkor Thom comes from monuments he commissioned himself, celebrating a ruler no independent chronicle ever describes.

Its main surviving account comes from a monk who broke his own country's travel ban to get there, and whose reliable observations sit mixed in with tales scholars regard as legend.

Deciphered in the 1830s, the emperor's own carved words went unattributed to him for another eighty years until one inscription finally named its author.