Lumbini: About Ashoka Pillar

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About Ashoka Pillar

During his pilgrimages, Indian Emperor Asoka left behind monuments to propagate Dharma at every place he visited from north to south and east to west. According to Buddhist literature, he is said to have built 84,000 stupas. In Lumbini, he erected a pillar with the following inscription to commemorate his visit. 


Devanapiyena piyadasina lajina visativasabhisitena
atana agacha mahiyite hida Budhe jate Sakyamuniti
silavigadab ca kalapita silathabhe cha usapapite
hida Bhagavam Lumminigame ubalike kate
athabhhagiya cha (Roman script, Pandey, 39.-1962). (PI.70)



The translation of the inscription given above made by the Department of Archaeology of H.M.G. Nepal is as follows: 


King Piyadasi (Asoka) the beloved of Devas in the twentieth year of the coronation himself made a royal visit; Buddha Sakyamuni having been born here, a stone railing was built and a stone pillar erected. The Bhagavan having been born here, Lumbini Village was tax-reduced and entitled to the eighth part (only). (Pl. # 7 1) 

Twenty years after his coronation, King Priyadasi, the beloved of god, visited Lumbini in person and offered worship there because the Buddha, the sage of the Sakyas, was born there. He built a stonewall around the place and erected the stone pillar to commemorate his visit. Because Lord Buddha was born there, he made the village of Lumbini free from taxes and subject to pay only one-eighth of the produce as land revenue instead of the usual rate (Sircar, 69:1967). 

Opinions differ widely on the meaning of silavigadabhica. Hultzsch and Charpentier thought it denoted a stone bearing a horse. Dr. Bliandarkar, following Ramakrishna and Fleet, renders the passage as follows: "He caused a huge stone wall to be made." Prof. Mookerji adopts a suggestion of Dr. Barua and renders the passage thus: "A stone bearing a figure was caused to be constructed" (Bhattacharya, 59:1960). 

From the inscription of the Lumbini pillar we can conclude that Asoka showed his respect for the Buddha by the following acts: 

Personally visiting the place and worshipping it, Constructing a stone wall surrounding the exact site of the nativity, Erecting a stone pillar with a suitable inscription to mark the place as worthy of commemoration by stating it's significance, and Exempting pilgrims visiting the place from all religious taxes and reducing the royalty payment on the produce of the village of Lumbini to one-eighth only, 

These taxes are explained by Bliandarkar 'as religious cesses paid by pilgrims at certain holy places, such as Dwaraka in Kathiawar, where even today the practice exists, based on his observation of the Indian customs. Assuming that such cesses were prevalent in Lumbini, he believes that Asoka abolished them to spare unnecessary hardship to his co-religionists visiting Lumbini, the most sacred firtha for Buddhists'

Barua notes that the interpretation of the passage "hida Bhagavam jateti Lumminigame ubalike kate - athabhagiya ca", causes some difficulty, especially with the word ubalike, (Skt. udvalika), i.e 'free from bali or tax'. It seems to indicate that Lumbini was exempted from the prevalent tax rate of one-sixth or one-fourth noted by classical authors and made to pay a nominal tax of one-eighth only (Chattopadhyaya, 131:1977). 

Bliandarkar shares Thomas's view that bali meant religious cesses and not simple taxes, so that Asoka exempted Buddhist pilgrims visiting the birthplace of the Buddha from the pilgrims' tax that they were presumably required to pay elsewhere. 

Hultzsch's interpretation, mentioned above, undoubtedly leads to a contradiction: the village of Lumbini could not have been freed from taxes and required at the same time to pay a one-eighth share of the produce. Hultzsch's explanatory note ("in the case of the village of Lumbini, bureaucracy prevailed against charity") reflects no credit on the personality of the king, and therefore Bliandarkar's interpretation has held the field (Bhattacharya, 59-60:1960). 

The reduction of tax in Lumbini village, further, reveals the extent of Asoka's empire. Raychaudhuri believes that the inscriptions at Kalsi and on the Rummindei (Lumbini) and Nigalisagar pillars prove the inclusion of what is now Deharadun District and the Terai within the limits of Asoka's empire. The inclusion of the Himalayan region within Asoka's empire is demonstrated by Rock Edict XIII, which refers to the Nabhapamtis of Nabhaka, probably identical with the Na-pei-kea (present day Gotihawa) of Fa-hsien, the birthplace of Krakuchchhanda Buddha about 10 miles south or south-west of Kapilavastu (Raychauhduri, 193:1927). 

Chattopadhyaya supports the views of Raychaudhuri, concluding that; the inclusion of a good portion of the Himalayan area is proved by the inscription in Asoka's Rummindei pillar in the vicinity of the village of Parariya and the inscriptions in the Nigalisagar pillar near the village of Nigliva, both of which show that the Nepalese Terai region was within the northem part of Asoka's empire. The first pillar marks the spot where the Buddha was bom, and the second contains a stupa with the relics of Kanakamuni (Chattopadhyaya, 118:1977). 

Though it is clear that Emperor Asoka used the pillar as a religious tool to propagate the Dharma, there are no historical records on the number of stone pillars erected by him, and many of them have been destroyed or lost track of in a span of 2,230 years and many others probably still waiting to be discovered. Some I I to 12 have been discovered at various places to date (Tuladhar, 57:1995) among which three are in Nepal, being located in Lumbini, Niglihawa and Gotihawa. 

According to John Irwin, out of a total of at least 40 Asokan pillars were known to have once existed, the remains of only about 20 are now traceable, many of them in fragments and so of little help to the art historian (Irwin, 706:1973). (Skt. # 4) 

The most interesting Asokan pillars are some exquisite columns with inscriptions in the Kharosthi script found lying around quarries located in Uttar Pradesh that are still in operation. They were discovered quite accidentally by Prof. P.C. Pant and Dr. Vidula Jayaswal of Banaras Hindu University when working at burial sites which date from 800 BC. Thus the source of the raw material for Mauryan sculptures is now known, along with the means of transporting it (both had been an enigma to archaeologists and airt historians). Even the local people importance of the pillar-like blocks of stone with inscriptions only after the study by Banaras Hindu University. 

After extraction from the earth, the sandstone slabs were chiselled into cylindrical or circular shapes and rolled down the hill to rafts on the river Ganga. The rounded sandstone blocks can be found in the riverbed, where they were partly submerged, and in the valleys surrounding the Chunar Hills (near Baragaon village in the hills south of the Chunar railway station in Mirzapur District, Uttar Pradesh, India). 

The sculptures, stupas, railings of stupas and doorways of the Mauryan period were fashioned from sandstone. All 40 Asokan pillars found in different parts of the country were also found to be made from Chunar sandstone. The shafts of the pillars were monolithic, with the carved heads added separately (Rai, 5:1990). 

The three Asokan pillars found in the Terai of Nepal were erected by Emperor Asoka to commemorate the 20th year of his coronation. The pillars in Lumbini and Niglihawa still bear the inscriptions, but the one in Gotihawa lacks its upper part, which probably contained an inscription.

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