Statement I : James Prinsep, an officer in the mint of the East India Company, deciphered Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts which were used in the earliest inscriptions and coins Statement I : James Prinsep found that most of the scripts mentioned a king referred to as Piyadassi—meaning ‘pleasant to behold’

Statement I is true as James Prinsep, an officer in the East India Company's mint, deciphered the Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts in the 1830s [1]. These scripts were used in the earliest Indian inscriptions and coins [2]. Statement II is also true; Prinsep discovered that many of these inscriptions referred to a king named 'Piyadassi', which translates to 'pleasant to behold' [3]. While both statements are factually correct, Statement II is not the 'explanation' for Statement I. The decipherment was achieved through the study of bilingual Indo-Greek coins and comparative analysis of scripts like Bengali and Devanagari, rather than simply finding the name Piyadassi [2]. The identification of Piyadassi as Ashoka was a subsequent historical breakthrough facilitated by the decipherment, not the cause of the decipherment itself.

Sources

1. [1] https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/lehs102.pdf
2. [2] THEMES IN INDIAN HISTORY PART I, History CLASS XII (NCERT 2025 ed.) > Chapter 2: Kings, Farmers and Towns > 7.1 Deciphering Brahmi > p. 46
3. [3] History , class XI (Tamilnadu state board 2024 ed.) > Chapter 4: Emergence of State and Empire > Sources > p. 47