Pillar edict of Emperor Asoka

Mauryan dynasty, around 238 BC
Probably from the Meerut Pillar, Uttar Pradesh, India

With an example of the earliest readable Indian script

Massive freestanding pillars and their finely carved capitals are the most famous examples of Mauryan art, and are found across India and Pakistan. They stand without a base and are topped with capitals in the shape of a gently arched bell of lotus petals. Normally they are crammed with seated or standing animals. They are usually carved from cream or buff coloured fine-grained hard sandstone with small black spots, quarried at Chunar near Banaras (Varanasi). Amazingly, these huge pillars were transported as a single block of stone about a thousand miles from their quarry in eastern India to the north-western parts of the subcontinent.

Some of them, like this fragment, carry inscriptions of Asoka, the last emperor of the Mauryan dynasty (reigned about 265-238 BC). The inscriptions are in Brahmi and Kharoshthi, the earliest examples of deciphered scripts from India. This inscription is in Brahmi, the ancestor of all modern Indian scripts. India must have had the technique of writing much earlier, but nothing readable survives, making these edicts important historical records.

The pillars themselves were highly symbolic and venerated. The text on this example is not specifically Buddhist, but refers to the Emperor's personal and beneveolent policy towards all sects and classes, which he calls dhamma, a word also used by Buddhists for their religion.

The best-known Mauryan pillar is at Sarnath, where the Buddha gave his first sermon. Its crowning sculpture of the four-headed lion has been adopted as the symbol of the Republic of India, while the symbol of the chakra (wheel) that once surmounted it has been used as the central motif of the Indian flag.

W. Zwalf (ed.), Buddhism: art and faith (London, The British Museum Press, 1985)