pillar
- Museum number
- 1880.21
- Description
-
Pillar fragment. Curved horizontal fragment of a burnished sandstone pillar engraved with part of Major Pillar Edict VI of the Mauryan king Aśoka.
- Production date
- 3rdC BC (mid)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 12.20 centimetres
-
Width: 32.60 centimetres
-
Depth: 7.60 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Location
- On display (G33/dc47b/s2)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
Buddhism: Art and Faith (BM, 1985)
2010-2011, London, BM/BBC, 'A History of the World in 100 Objects'
- Acquisition date
- 1880
- Acquisition notes
- The pillar was originally erected at Meerut in the 3rd century BCE and removed to Delhi in the mid-fourteenth century by Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq who incorporated it into a royal palace. The pillar was thrown down and broken into pieces in the reign of the late Mughal king Farrukhsiyar (CE 1713-19) by an explosion of a power magazine in the palace. Those inscribed portions that survived were subsequently sawn into sections and sent to the Asiatic Society, Calcutta. Some were retrieved in 1867 by order of the British Government and an attempt made to reassemble the pillar on the Ridge at Delhi. The British Museum fragment appears to have left India before 1867; it was held in the India Museum, London, until 1880 when the collections were transferred.
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1880.21
