Asokan Pillars in History
The most famous monuments associated with Asoka are the free-standing pillars that bear his inscriptions.[558] Asoka set up at least 20 such pillars, including those inscribed with his edicts in Prakrit.
The locations of these extend over the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent, from the Nepal Terai to the districts of Champaran and Muzaffarpur in northern Bihar, to Sarnath near Varanasi and Kausambi near Allahabad, to the Meerut and Hissar districts, and to Sanchi in central India. Unfortunately only a few of the pillar capitals survive and only seven complete specimens are known. Nevertheless, it is abundantly clear from subsequent copies, which were later engraved on many of the pillars, along with the displacement of pillars to other locations, that a rich oral tradition had emerged around them, which helped to keep the memory of Asoka alive long after his death. For example, in the fifth century ce, Samudragupta inscribed the Allahabad-Kausambi Pillar of Asoka with his prasasti (or eulogy). The pillar also records the visit of Raja Birbal, a prominent courtier of the Mughal emperor Akbar (1542-1605). Subsequently, his successor Jehangir (1569-1627) added another inscription to this pillar, which recorded his ancestry.Two other Asokan pillars were shifted to Delhi by Sultan Firuz Shah Tughluq in 1367 ce. A description of the removal of these pillars is given in a contemporary account the Shams-i-Sirdj.22 One of these was brought from Topra by boat on the Yamuna River and installed on a three-storied building in front of the Friday mosque in Firuz Shah Kotla, Delhi. The pillar has two principal inscriptions, but is also inscribed with several minor records of pilgrims and travelers, from the early centuries of the Common Era up to the nineteenth century. The oldest of the minor records is the name Subhadramitra, inscribed in letters of the fourth or fifth century ce, while a long epigram was engraved by the Chauhan prince Visala Deva in 1163 ce.
The three-storied structure and the mosque were designed by the sultan and formed part of a complex. The second Asokan pillar was brought from Meerut and set up in a hunting lodge on a hill, near the present Bara Hindu Rao hospital in Delhi. The surface of the stone pillar was much damaged, something that destroyed much of the inscription.[559] [560] A third pillar is located in the town of Fatehabad, Sultan Firuz Shah Tughluq's earliest urban site, built in the first year of his reign in 1351-1352. The bottom part of the pillar is probably of Mauryan origin, though the top section is of beige stone and carries an inscription referring to the Tughluq dynasty.The aesthetics of the sandstone pillars, with their characteristic polish, brought them to the attention of early European visitors and travelers, who not only described them in glowing terms, but who also sketched and painted them before photography became the norm. The first pillar reported by a European was the one in Delhi, which had been moved in the fourteenth century by the Tughluq emperor to Ferozeshah Kotla. In 1615-1616, the English traveler Thomas Coryat (15771617) walked through Turkey and Persia to the Mughal court at Agra and visited Delhi on his way to Gujarat, where he died at Surat. Initially, Coryat assumed from its polish that the pillar was made of brass, but on closer examination he realized that it was highly polished sandstone with an upright script that resembled a form of Greek.[561] He credited Alexander with setting up the pillar to commemorate his victory over the Indian king, Porus.[562]
The best-preserved pillar is the one at Lauriya-Nandangarh in district Champaran, which is complete with edicts and a lion capital. In the eighteenth century, the still standing pillars, with their splendid capitals and inscriptions, attracted attention. In 1797, James Nathaniel Rind made a pencil, pen, and ink copy of the Asokan inscription on the pillar at Lauriya-Nandangarh, with a small drawing of the lion capital, as well as the elevation and measurements of the pillar.
The drawing in the British Library (shelf mark WD 3471) is of interest as it provides an early record of the pillar and its measurements.By the end of the nineteenth century, 34 separate edicts had been found all over the subcontinent referring to Piyadasi as the issuer of the inscriptions, who was also termed devanampiya or beloved of the gods. James Prinsep (1799-1840), the assay master of mints at Calcutta and Benares and secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, deciphered the Asokan edicts in 1837. It was in the same year that George Turnour published a translation of the Sri Lankan chronicle the Mahavamsa, which led scholars to identify the Piyadasi of the inscriptions with King Asoka of the chronicles.[563] In 1901, Vincent Smith published one of the earliest histories on the subject, titled Asoka: The Buddhist Emperor of India. It was not until 1915, however, that the first inscription to mention Asoka by name was discovered at Maski in northern Karnataka. Another clue to the chronology of Asoka was provided by Greek kings who reigned in regions bordering his empire and who were mentioned in Rock Edict XIII, mentioned earlier. If the assertion is correct that the edict in which the names of these kings are mentioned was engraved in the fourteenth year of Asoka's reign, its date would be 251 âñå: at this date all the kings were alive. Since then, the Mauryas, who dated between 321 and 185 âñå,[564] have maintained their central position in ancient Indian historiography.
Gradually, the search widened to include not merely the reporting of new inscriptions, but also the archaeological confirmation of sites associated with Asoka's rule. As discussed earlier, several attempts were made in the nineteenth century to locate Pataliputra, the capital of Asoka, and it was sometimes assumed that the ancient city had been washed away by the river Ganga. In 1892, Lieutenant Colonel Waddell, professor of chemistry at the Medical College, Calcutta, visited the modern city of Patna and identified several mounds around it, which he suggested were a part of the ancient capital. He theorized that these five mounds (or panca pahari) to the south of the city were the remnants of the five stupas set up by the king, though none of them yielded any relics. From 1892 to 1899, Waddell carried out archaeological excavations at Patna and showed that the modern city was located on the ancient Mauryan capital of Pataliputra. At Kumrahar, on the outskirts of Patna, Waddell discovered a large piece of an Asokan pillar, though it carried no inscription. The vertical cleavage of the shaft suggested that the pillar had been struck by lightning and destroyed.[565] Thus by the beginning of the twentieth century, the reign of the Mauryas and especially that of Asoka formed an important marker in the early history of India.