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the southern gateway of the Great Stūpa the Emperor Asoka put up a pillar carved in stone, and inscribed with one of his famous edicts with which he propagated Buddhist teaching or issued orders relating to the conduct of the Sangha. The pillar when intact, says Sir John Marshall, was about 42 feet in height, and consisted of a round and slightly tapering monolithic shaft, with bell-shaped capital surmounted by an abacus and a crowning ornament of four lions set back to back, the whole finely finished and polished to a remarkable lustre from top to bottom.

The same high authority, in common with Fergusson, maintains that the "bell-shaped" capital was evolved in Persia. "It was from Persian originals, specimens of which are still extant in the plains of the Murghab, at Istakhr, Natesh-i-Rustam, and Persepolis, that the smooth unfluted shafts of the Mauryan columns were copied." It may be granted that the craftsmen who executed this and other Asokan columns were in all probability skilled Persian masons attracted to Asoka's court by the fame of the great emperor. But that Asoka's imperial ensign was a mere copy of Persepolitan pillars is not in the least likely. Asoka was not a parvenu monarch constrained to borrow