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A Note on the Allahabad Pillar of Aśoka

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

It is a fact that hardly requires repetition that one of the edicts on the pillar of Aśoka standing inside Akbar's fort at Allahabad is addressed to the Mahāmātras of Kauśāmbī (modern Kosam on the bank of the Jamna, about thirty miles from Allahabad) whence it was removed to Allahabad by some king. Cunningham suggested that Firūz Shāh, who is known to have removed two other Aśokan columns to Delhi from Meerut (Mīrath) and Topra, was the author also of this removal from Kosam to Allahabad. On this Hultzsch makes the following remarks: “But while Delhi was the capital of Firōz Shāh, Allahabad was founded, or rather re-founded two centuries after him by Akbar. This ruler may have removed from Kōsam the Allahabad pillar, on which the inscriptions of his favourite Bīrbal and of his son Jahāngīr are engraved. In this case the pillar would have been still standing at Kōsam when the inscription of Samudragupta was incised on it.” The divergence between the views of these two scholars makes the subject worthy of a fresh study.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1935

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References

page 697 note 1 JBAS., 1927, pp. 689 ff.

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page 698 note 4 Strangely, the word saphala “meritorious”, “fruitful,” has been taken to denote the name of the insoriber.

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page 700 note 2 Purchas His Pilgrimes, vol. iv, p. 67 (italics ours).

page 701 note 1 Ibid., p. 48.

page 701 note 2 Elliot and Dowson, vol. iii, pp. 350–1.

page 701 note 3 Ibid., p. 354; Badaoni, tr. Ranking, vol. i, p. 327; Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1838, pp. 429430Google Scholar; Cambridge History of India, vol. iii, plate xxxviii.

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page 705 note 1 “Le sommet est orné d'un globe de pierre surmonté d'un cone,” Description Historique et Geographique de l'Inde, 1791, Tome I, p. 224.

page 705 note 2 Ibid., facing p. 223.

page 705 note 3 See the enclosed photograph, for which we are indebted to Mr. B. M. Vyas, Executive Officer, Allahabad Municipal Board, and the organizer of the Allahabad Municipal Museum.

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page 706 note 1 Ball, , Travels of Tavernier, vol. i, p. 119Google Scholar. The pillar referred to is probably the Lāṭ Bhairo, which was destroyed in the communal riot of 1809. (District Gazetteer of the United Provinces, vol. xxvi, p. 208; also Führer, , Monumental Antiquities and Inscriptions of the North-West Province and Oudh, p. 206Google Scholar.)