纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 032阿育王石柱(1)

This week I'm looking at the great powers of Europe and Asia around two thousand years ago, and the leaders whose legacies are still with us in the world today.

约两千年前的几个欧亚强国，其文化遗产影响人类至今。

What is the right way for a leader to rule?

他们确立了有关如何正确治理国家，

How should rulers construct their image and project their power?

如何树立君主形象，以及如何运用自身权力的基本政治概念。

How does a ruler actually change the way the people think?

同时也让我们了解统治者如何改变人民的思维。

Today's leader, Ashoka the Great, took on a vast empire and through the strength of his ideas began a tradition which leads directly to the ideals of Gandhi, and still flourishes today-a tradition of pluralistic, humane, non-violent statecraft.

印度的阿育王接掌了一个庞大的帝国，而其思想开启了一个悠久的传统，直接影响了圣雄甘地，并活跃至今。这是一种多元并存、仁慈与非暴力的治国方针。

And it's those ideas that are carried, literally, by the object for this programme.

本节将要介绍的文物便包含了这些思想。

I'm with the object now-it's a fragment of stone, sandstone to be exact, and it's about the size of a large curved brick-not much to look at all, but it opens up the story of one of the great figures of world history.

这是一块砂岩碎片，大小如同大型的曲面砖，外表虽不起眼，却能让我们了解世界史上的一位伟人。

On the stone are two lines of text, inscribed in round spindly-looking letters-appropriately first described as "pin-man script"-and these two lines are the remains of a much larger, longer text that was originally carved on a great circular column, about 30 feet high (9m) and 3 feet (1m) in diameter.

石头上刻着两行纤细的圆形文字，曾被称为“大头针文”。它们是两行原本刻在大型圆柱上的更长的文字的片段，原柱高达九米，直径约一米。