Pillars of Ashoka

The pillars of Ashoka are a series of monolithic columns dispersed throughout the Indian subcontinent, erected or at least inscribed with edicts by the 3rd Mauryan Emperor Ashoka The Great who reigned from c. 268 to 232 BCE. Ashoka used the expression Dhaṃma thaṃbhā (Dharma stambha), i.e. "pillars of the Dharma" to describe his own pillars. These pillars constitute important monuments of the architecture of India, most of them exhibiting the characteristic Mauryan polish. Of the pillars erected by Ashoka, twenty still survive including those with inscriptions of his edicts. Only a few with animal capitals survive of which seven complete specimens are known.> Two pillars were relocated by Firuz Shah Tughlaq to Delhi. Several pillars were relocated later by Mughal Empire rulers, the animal capitals being removed. Averaging between 12 and 15 m in height, and weighing up to 50 tons each, the pillars were dragged, sometimes hundreds of miles, to where they were erected. The pillars of Ashoka are among the earliest known stone sculptural remains from India.

Quotes

 * …About 2 c. without Dely is the remainder of an auncient mole [mahal?] or hunting house, built by Sultan Berusa [Sultan Firoz Shah, the pillar referred to is the Asoka lat brought by him from Meerut], a great Indian monarch, with much curiositie of stoneworke. With and above the rest is to be seen a stone pillar, which, passing through three stories, is higher then all twenty foure foot, having at the top a globe and a halfe moone over it. This stone, they say, stands as much under the earth, and is placed in the water, being all one entire stone; some say Naserdengady, a Potan king [probably Nasiruddin Tughlak, son of Firoz Shah], would have taken it up and was prohibited by multitude of scorpions, and that it hath inscriptions. In divers parts of India the like are to be seene, and of late was found buried in the ground about Fettipore a stone piller of an hundred cubits length, which the King commanded to bring to Agra, but was broken in the way, to his great griefe.
 * Delhi, ancient stone pillar in front of Sultan’s palace, William Finch quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume III Chapter 5


 * Late in the afternoon of the same day [14th February, 1843] I rode through the city, to the ruins of the palace of the Sultan Feroze, situated a few hundred steps without the south gate. On the plateau of this palace is the celebrated Feroze-Cotelah, or column. It is one of those columns which the pious Fabian speaks of, in his travells 1400 years ago, and of which there is still one in the fort of Allahabad, and three others in North Behar, one in Terai, near to the frontiers of Nepaul, the second not far from Bettiah, and the third on the river Gandaki. They have all the same inscriptions, in the ancient Pali, or Deva Magadhi language, and the Feroze-Cotelah has, also, inscriptions in Persian and Sanscrit. The learned James Princep succeeded in deciphering that in the Pali language. It is an edict of As-o-ko [Ashoka], the Bhoodist king of all India, who lived from 325 to 288 B.C., forbidding the destruction of living animals, and enforcing the observance of Bhoodism [Buddhism]. The Feroze-Cotelah consists of one piece of brown granite; it is ten feet in circumference, and, gradually tapering towards the summit, rises to the height of 42 feet. It is embedded in the platform of the completely ruined palace. The sun was nearly setting when I arrived before these extensive ruins: I tied my horse to a portion of the standing wall, and clambered over ponderous arches and porticoes up to the plateau. On this spot, standing before a monument more than two thousand years old, which reminded me of three great epochs of the history of India, that of the Bhoodists, of the Brahmins, and of the Moguls, surrounded by ruins, extending further than the eye could reach, with a view of Delhi, whose minarets and domes were gilded by the setting sun, – those times and nations could not fail to rise in a magic picture before my mind.
 * Orlich, Captain Leopold von, Travels In India Including Sinde And The Punjab, 2 vols., Usha, 1985, first published 1845.quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume IV Chapter9