HIstory of Ashoka Pillars

• The pillars of Ashoka are a series of columns dispersed throughout the northern Indian subcontinent, erected or at least inscribed with edicts by the Mauryan king Ashoka during his reign in the 3rd century BC.
• Originally, there must have been many pillars but only nineteen survive with inscriptions.
• Many are preserved in a fragmentary state.
• Averaging between forty and fifty feet in height, and weighing up to fifty tons each, all the pillars were quarried at Chunar, just south of Varanasi and dragged, sometimes hundreds of miles, to where they were erected.
• The columns that bear the edicts of Ashoka include the two pillars at Delhi (originally located at Meerut and Topra in Haryana and were brought to Delhi during the reign of Firuz Shah Tughluq in 1356), the pillar at Allahabad (is believed as originally located at Kaushambi) and the pillars found at Lauriya-Areraj, Lauriya-Nandangarh, Rampurva (with lion capital), Sankissa, Sanchi and Sarnath. The columns bearing dedicatory inscriptions were found in Lumbini and Nigalisagar. The pillars found at Vaishali (with single lion capital) and Rampurva (with bull capital) do not bear any edict.[4][5]
• These pillars were carved in two types of stone.
• Some were of the spotted red and white sandstone from the region of Mathura,
• the others of buff-colored fine grained hard sandstone usually with small black spots quarried in the Chunar near Varanasi.
• The uniformity of style in the pillar capitals suggests that they were all sculpted by craftsmen from the same region.
• It would therefore seem that stone was transported from Mathura and Chunar to the various sites where the pillars have been found, and there was cut and carved by craftsmen.

The pillars have majorly four Description parts.

• Pillar at Sarnath
• Pillar at Vaishali
• Pillar at Allahabad
• Pillars at Lauriya-Areraj and Lauriya-Nandangarh

Ashok Chakra