Ashokan Pillar Remnants - Sarnath, Uttar Pradesh, India
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N 25° 22.890 E 083° 01.360
44R E 703499 N 2808731
The remnants of a broken Ashokan Pillar are located in Deer Park next to the Archeological Museum of Sarnath in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Waymark Code: WMQ8BF
Location: India
Date Posted: 01/08/2016
Views: 1
Scattered throughout Deer Park are ruins of various stupas, temples, shrines and monasteries first built by king Asoka during the Mauryan era (4th to 2nd century BCE), and later renovated and reconstructed by various royal patrons of the Gupta and Pala dynasties. After its destruction in 1194 by the Islamic invader Qutbuddin Aibak, Sarnath was lost for the next 640 years, until Alexander Cunningham and his team of archeologists discovered in 1837 the ruins, opening a forgotten door to India's past splendour.
There were no surviving traces above ground of the Sarnath pillar, mentioned in the accounts of medieval Chinese pilgrims, when the Indian Civil Service engineer F.O. Oertel, with no real experience in archaeology, was allowed to excavate there in the winter of 1904-05. He first uncovered the remains of a Gupta shrine west of the main stupa, overlying an Ashokan structure. To the west of that he found the lowest section of the pillar, upright but broken off near ground level. Most of the rest of the pillar was found in three sections nearby, and then, since the Sanchi capital had been excavated in 1851, the search for an equivalent was continued, and it was found close by. It was both finer in execution and in much better condition than that at Sanchi. The pillar appeared to have been deliberately destroyed at some point. The finds were recognised as so important that the first onsite museum in India (and one of the few then in the world) was set up to house them.
The marker near the broken Ashokan Pillar exibit reads:
"Ashokan Pillar - These are the fragment of a 15.25 meter high monolithic pillar created by the mauryan emperor Ashoka (272-232 BC) made of Chunar sand stone. These bear the typical mauryan polish. The cylindrical shaft is slightly tapering with a diameter of 0.71 meter at the base and 0.56 meter at the top. It was once surmounted by the famous four addorsed example of Mauryan art (Now the National Emmblem of Govt of India) and displayed in the site museum. The pillar bears three inscriptions. The earliest one is an edict of Ashoka. In the Mauryan Brahmi script in which the king warns the monks and nuns against creating schism in the sangha. Next mention the 40th year of the Kushana king Asvaghosha of Kaushambi and the third is in early Gupta Brahmi script refers to the teachers of the sammitiya sect and the Vastiputrak School."
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