Ashoka Pillar

 

Ashoka pillar is seen in different places in India and this was erected by the King Ashoka of Mauryan dynasty. He built many pillars in various places like Lauriya-Areraj, Lauriya-Nandangarh, Rampurva, Sanchi, Sarnath, Sankissa, Lumbini, Vaishali and Nigalisagar. There are about nineteen of them existing now and all these pillars are about forty to fifty feet in height and each of them weight fifty tons. It is believed that all of them were manufactured at Chunar and they are transported to various places. This is built in Greco Buddhist style and they are balanced in an amazing way.

 

Among all these Ashoka pillars, the one in Sarnath is very famous for its lion capital because it is adopted as the national emblem of India. This has four lions each one of them facing each one of the four prime directions. It is placed on an abacus with the sculptures of elephant, dharma chakra, horse, bull and lion. The dharma chakra has 24 spokes indicating 24 hours of the day and the whole sculpture is placed over an inverted lotus in bloom. They bear the teachings of Buddha.

 

The Ashoka pillar at Delhi contains the edicts of Ashoka. It was originally placed at Meerut and in 1356 Firuz Shah Tughluq brought this to Delhi. There is no edict in the pillars at Vaishali and Rampurva. The Ashoka pillar has ten commandments of Buddha inscribed on it and also contain the details of the conquests of the Chauhan King Visala who ruled over in 1163 AD in Sanskrit language.

 

These pillars were made of red and white sandstone and of hard sandstone with black spots. There is a similarity among all these pillars and this shows that the same group of craftsmen has crafted all these pillars. There are different crowning animals on top of each one of them and they indicate the life of Buddha in some way.

 

If you take a trip from Patliputra to the Nepali you can see five such Ashoka pillars on the way. The Ashoka pillar at Vaishali has lion capital on it. Buddha took his last voyage towards the north direction and to indicate this, the face of the lion is also towards the north in this pillar. The Ashoka pillar at Allahabad is situated within the Allahabad Fort. This was supposed to be erected at Kaushambi 30 kms from Allahabad and then brought to Allahabad later on. The inscriptions are in the Brahmi script. It also contains inscriptions made in the time of Samudra Gupta in 375 CE.

 

There is a background story behind the construction of these Ashoka pillars. Ashoka was the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya and was initially a tyrant. He fought against the ruler of Kalinga and won the battle. After seeing the sufferings of wounded and killed people in the battlefield, he changed his mind and accepted Buddhism as his way of life. He wanted to spread Buddhism and these pillars are one of his ways of propagating the religion. They were manufactured at one place and were taken to many far off places and erected so that the preaching of Buddha will reach far and wide.

Article Posted By : SumazlalView All Articles

Suhaina Mazhar is a freelance content writer and blogger with five years experience in content writing. http://sumazla.blogspot.com is her blog.

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Ashoka Pillar , sarnath pillar ,

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