Lion Capital of Ashoka
Four Asiatic lions stand back to back on a circular abacus. The Buddhist wheel of the moral law appears in relief below each lion. Between the chakras appear four animals in profile—horse, bull, elephant, and lion. The architectural bell below the abacus, is a stylized upside-down lotus
Material	sandstone
Height	2.1 metres (7 ft)
Width	86 centimetres (34 in) (diameter of abacus)
Created	3rd century BCE
Discovered	F. O. Oertel (excavator), 1904–1905
Present location	Sarnath Museum, India
Registration	A 1

The Lion Capital of Ashoka is the capital, or head, of a column erected by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka in Sarnath, India ca. 250 BCE. Its crowning features^[1] are four life-sized lions set back to back on a drum-shaped abacus. The side of the abacus is adorned with wheels in relief, and interspersing them, four animals, a lion, an elephant, a bull, and a galloping horse follow each other from right to left. A bell-shaped lotus forms the lowest member of the capital, and the whole 7 feet (2.1 m) tall, carved out of a single block of sandstone and highly polished, was secured to its 42 feet (13 m) monolith column by a long metal dowel. The column was erected after Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism and commemorated the site of Gautama Buddha's first sermon some two centuries before.

The lion capital eventually fell to the ground and was buried. It was excavated by the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) in the very early years of the 20th century. The excavation was undertaken by F. O. Oertel in the ASI winter season of 1904–1905. The column, which had broken before it became buried, remains in its original location in Sarnath, protected but on view for visitors. The Lion Capital was in good condition, though not undamaged. It was cracked across the neck just above the lotus, and two of its lions had sustained some damage to their heads. The capital is displayed not far from the excavation site in the Sarnath Museum, the oldest site museum of the ASI.

The lion capital is among the first group of significant stone sculptures to have appeared in South Asia after the demise of the Indus Valley Civilisation 1,600 years earlier. Their sudden appearance, as well as similarities to Persepolitan columns of Iran before the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BCE, have led some to conjecture an eastward migration of Iranian stonemasons among whom the tradition of naturalistic carving had been preserved for the interim decades. Others have countered that a tradition of erecting columns in wood and copper had a history in India and the transition to stone was but a small step in an empire and period in which ideas and technologies were in a state of flux. The lion capital is rich in symbolism, both Buddhist and secular.

In July 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, the interim prime minister of India, proposed in the Constituent Assembly of India that the wheel on the abacus be the model for the wheel in the centre of the Dominion of India's new national flag, and the capital itself without the lotus the model for the state emblem. The proposal was accepted in December 1947.

Excavation

F. O. Oertel's plan of excavation. The Lion Capital was found to the west of the main shrine, which is to the north of the "Jagat Singh" stupa.

The excavation site two years later

Sarnath already had a history of visits and some exploration in the 18th and 19th centuries. William Hodges, the painter had visited it in 1780 and made a record of the Dhamekh Stupa, the most conspicuous monument. In 1794, Jonathan Duncan, the Commissioner of Benares had noted diggings for bricks carried out by Jagat Singh, the Dewan of the Raja of Benares. The location of these were 150 metres (490 ft) to the west of the Dhamekh.^[2]

Colin Mackenzie had visited in 1815 and found sculptures that were donated to the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In 1861, Alexander Cunningham had visited and attempted to dig down into the Dhamekh from its top to uncover relics. He soon abandoned the effort, but not before noting that a large number of votive models of the stupa were scattered everywhere, lending credence to the view that it was the spot where the Buddha had taught his first sermon.^[2] The site was pillaged in 1894 when a large number of bricks were carried off from Sarnath for use as ballast in a railway line being laid nearby.^[2]

When F. O. Oertel, an engineer in the Public Works Department, who had surveyed Hindu and Buddhist sites in Burma and Central India in the 1890s^[3] was appointed superintending engineer at Varanasi, he constructed a building at Sarnath to house the artefacts found earlier and then paved the road to Sarnath. He then convinced Sir John Marshall, the director-general of the ASI, to be allowed to excavate Sarnath in the winter of 1904–05.^[4]

Oertel began to work in the vicinity of the Jagat Singh stupa, which lies to the southwest of the Dhamek, the most prominent monument in Sarnath. He proceeded to excavate the Main Shrine, north of the stupa. It was to the west of this shrine, he found the stump and fragments of the Ashokan pillar at Sarnath, and soon its capital.^[5]

Description

Capital in Sahni's Catalogue, 1914

Pieces of the pillar, the lowest portion in situ, shown in 2016, on view but protected behind a glass enclosure.^[6] It is located584 ft (178 m) SSW of Dhamek Stupa

In 1904, John Marshall had resolved to put in place plans for a museum in Sarnath to keep the excavated artefacts close to the site.^[7] The museum, the first site museum of the ASI, was completed in 1910.^[7] The lion capital has been displayed in the museum since.^[7] Daya Ram Sahni, later to be appointed the first Indian Director-General of the ASI, supervised the organisation and labelling of the museum's collection and in 1914 completed the Catalogue of the Museum of Archaeology at Sarnath".^[7] Oertel's detailed report, "Excavations at Särnäth," had appeared in 1908 the Archæological Survey of India, Annual Report, 1904–5.^[8]

The capital is 7 feet (2.1 m) tall in total. Its lowest portion is a bell 2 feet (61 cm) high, carved in the Persepolitan style, and decorated with 16 petals. The bell has been interpreted to be a stylized lotus, a common motif.^[9] Above the bell is a circular abacus, or a drum-shaped slab, of diameter 34 inches (86 cm) and height 13+1⁄2 inches (34 cm). Sitting addorsed—back to back, joined at the shoulders and facing outwards—on the abacus are four lions,^[10] each 3+3⁄4 feet (1.1 m) tall.^[11] Two of these lions are undamaged. The heads of the other two had come off before excavation and required affixing. Of these damaged, one lion was missing the lower jaw at the time of excavation and the other the upper, both not found since. On the side of the abacus and below each lion is carved a wheel of 24 spokes in high relief. Between the wheels, also shown in high relief are four animals following each other from right to left. They are a lion, an elephant, a bull, and a horse; the first three are shown at walking pace but the horse is at full gallop.^[12][13] Although the capital was carved from a single block of marble it is broken across the necking just above the bell.

The capital has a polished finish. Although most sandstone is difficult to polish without dislodging the grains on the surface, very fine-grained sandstone, found, e.g. in Chunar, can be polished with a fine abrasive or even patiently with wood.^[14] The pillar which bore the capital aloft "remains broken in several pieces at the site and is now protected by a glass enclosure that separates the pillar from visitors."^[6] The lions supported a larger wheel, now lost except for fragments.^{[a] [16]} It was held in place by a shaft. Although the shaft was never found, a hole 8 inches (20 cm) across in which it was fitted appears drilled into the unfinished rock between the lions. Four fragments of the rim of this larger wheel were found, as well as several fragments of the spokes (which are thought to have originally numbered 32 in total),^[17] and are on display in the Sarnath Museum.^[b] The original diameter of the topmost wheel was around 2+3⁄4 feet (0.84 m).^[13]

Symbolism

The lion capital and its Ashokan pillar have complex meanings. The lions—the four sitting addorsed on the abacus and the one badly damaged appearing in relief on its rim—have been associated with the Buddha, one of whose names was Shakyasimha, the lion of the Shakya clan.^[19] The three other animals on the rim of the abacus have been associated with events in the life of Prince Siddhartha: the elephant with his mother Queen Maya's dream about his birth; the horse with Kanthaka, the mount of his departure from the palace in the dead of night, and the bull with his first meditation under the rose apple tree (jambu, syzygium aqueum).^[19] The abacus and its animals have been related to Lake Anavatapta of a contemporary 3rd century BCE myth.^[19] A water spout arose from the heart of this lake. After surfacing and splitting into four streams it emanated from the mouths of the same four animals sitting on the lake's shore and flowed onto the four corners of the earth, like the message of the Buddha or of Ashoka himself.^[19] The pillar, thus, has been likened both to the water spout rising to meet the lake-like abacus and also the axis mundi, the world's axis.^[19]

Queen Maya dreams of the White Elephant entering her womb, Gandhara

Prince Siddhartha become an ascetic hermit by shaving his hair, his horse Kanthaka by his side, Borobodur

The four lions have also been thought to be the cardinal directions as if roaring the Buddha's message to the remotest parts. A later Buddhist text, the Maha-Sihanada Sutta (Great Discourse on the Lions' Roar), pointedly links the wheel and lion with its refrain, “[the Buddha] roars his lion’s roar in the assemblies, and sets rolling the Wheel of Brahma [wheel of the law]."^[20] In other interpretations, the four small animals shown on the side of the abacus have been thought to represent the cardinal directions: the lion (north), elephant (west), bull (south), and horse (east),^[21] and the smaller wheels for the solstices and the equinoxes.^[22] In the Aṅguttara Nikāya, the Buddha compared himself to the Indian lotus, a flower that rises clean and pure from muddy pond water, as he rose above an impure world to achieve awakening.^[22]

Scholars have debated the meanings of the wheels, the large one that had once surmounted the capital and the four appearing in relief along the rim of the abacus. Some have likened the wheels, especially the lost larger one, to the Buddhist wheel of the moral law, the dharmachakra, which the Buddha began to turn in Sarnath and whose motion through time and space has spread his message universally.^[20][23] Others have thought them to have been nonsectarian symbols, promoting an ethical notion of rulership, or chakravartin (literally wheel turner) which Ashoka might have been aspiring to present himself,^[20] to align himself with the prestige and universality of the Buddha.^[19][20] Overall, the symbolism of the Sarnath column and capital are thought to be more Buddhist than secular. As the only capital to exhibit wheel motifs it is thought to symbolize the wheel of the moral law in "a specifically Buddhist sense of the term."^[24]

Influences

Writing in 1922, John Marshall was the first scholar to suggest that the Sarnath capital was the work of foreign artisans working in India. Comparing the capital to a male figure from Parkham, Marshall wrote, “While the Sārnāth capital is thus an exotic, alien to Indian ideas in expression and in execution, the statue of Pārkham falls naturally into line with other products of indigenous art and affords a valuable starting point for the study of its evolution."^[25] The realism of the lions, the straining tendons of their paws, and the "flesh around the jaws" have led others to ask about the provenance of some of the art commonly ascribed to the Maurya period.^[19] To Vincent Smith in 1930, the shine of the Mauryan pillars, the lotus bell bases of their capitals and the stylized lions, suggested Iranian carvers had migrated to the Mauryan empire after Alexander the Great's sacking of Persepolis in 330 BCE. He and others after him have detected Persian-Hellenistic influences in Mauryan art.^[26]

Addorsed lion capital, Persepolis, Iran, showing conventionalized grimace and taut paws

Bronze lion, Susa, Iran, 6th–4th century BCE

In 1973, John Irwin challenged these notions by advancing three hypotheses: (a) Not all pillars were made for Ashoka; some had been adapted for his use; (b) whereas the four lions did seem to have Persian influence, the spiritedness of bull and the elephant betray an intimate familiarity with animals whose habitat did not extend to Iran; and (c) Ashoka had channelled a preexisting industry and culture devoted to treating a pillar as a symbol for axis mundi, the axis around which the earth revolves.^[26] To J. C. Harle, the Sarnath lions did show a conventionalized style associated with Achaemenid or Sargonid empires, but the floral motifs on the Mauryan abaci show the influence of western Asian traditions older than any in the Hellenistic world.^[27] He also echoed Irwin's idea that as there are no examples elsewhere of "single, free-standing" pillars, they must be the product of a South Asian tradition, perhaps in non-durable materials such as wood for the pillar and copper for the crown.^[27]

Irwin's first hypothesis has been challenged by Frederick Asher who says, "That the pillars attributed to Aśoka are really from his time is a virtual certainty despite arguments that they date earlier (Irwin 973). The author of the pillars’ inscriptions, Piyadasi, is known to be Aśoka from the Maski inscription in present-day Karnataka. Moreover, the symbolism of the pillars and their capitals, appropriate for these royal edicts, suggests that the pillars were made to carry the inscriptions."^[28]

Osmund Bopearachchi has mentioned Irwin and V. S. Agrawala among those who have held that the early stone carving was the work of Indians alone. He has suggested that the inspiration for them and the technique of polishing them came from Persia, noting further the absence of any archaeological evidence for Agrawala's claim that the technique went back to the Vedic Age and was inherited by the Mauryans.^[29]

Upinder Singh has observed that the cultural standing of the Asiatic lion (Panthera leo Persica, also Persian lion) as a symbol of projecting political power had significantly increased in India after the rise of the Mahajanapadas in the second half of the first millennium BCE. By Ashoka's time, the Asiatic lion had a long history of being employed as a symbol of the Achaemenian royalty. As the monarch of a vast realm, but also a Buddhist, he sought new symbols to project his power. Thus whereas the Ashokan lions seemed remarkably similar to the conventionalized Persian, the idea of using a pair of addorsed lions to project both spiritual and temporal power was new.^[30]

Christopher Ernest Tadgell considers it unlikely that Ashoka's capital was carved "without the experience imported by Persian immigrants," but suggests that regardless of Ashoka's purpose of using Buddhism as a unifying force, his success depended on the prevailing worship of the pole (stambha) as the axis mundi in the native pre-Buddhist shrines.^[31]

Harry Falk, while categorically stating a Mauryan debt to "the stonework inherited from Achaemenid Iran," of the appearance during the Mauryan period of artwork that contrasted remarkably with local styles, and stating the likelihood of traditions of producing "naturalistic forms" being preserved in Iranian stonemasons for the critical decades between the fall of Persepolis and the appearance of Mauryan columns, emphasises the entrepreneurial spirit of Ashoka who, "did not shrink from doing what only the most illustrious rulers outside India had done before him: he had pillars produced of unbelievable dimensions, cut in one piece and transported to predefined places—pillars crowned with lions and bulls of an unprecedented naturalistic beauty."^[32]

Frederick Asher, summarizing, credits the world system that had briefly emerged during Ashoka's rule. In his view, South Asia had a hitherto unprecedented level of engagement with the Mediterranean world during the Mauryan period. It is no coincidence that it is during that period stone sculpture appeared in South Asia, at least in the form associated with Ashokan columns. But this should not be seen in colonialist terms as an export from an Achaemenian or Hellenistic centre to the South Asian periphery but as the result of Ashoka's entrepreneurial engagement with the larger world.^[33] The culture in India was more receptive to innovation and there was a sense of a common culture, caused partly by the expansion of Buddhism to the borders with Iran, and the appearance of markers proclaiming a message. When the Ashokan empire fell, the breakdown was drastic. New styles of art emerged, but their artistic inspirations and appeal were more local.^[33]

Legacy

Contemporaneously to the pillar of Ashoka at Sarnath, a similar pillar was erected at Sanchi, which also featured four addorsed lions but had a different design for the abacus.^[34] The Sanchi pillar also shares an admonition against schism among the communities of monks and nuns.^[34] Over the centuries, the lion capital of Ashoka served as an important artistic model:^[35]

Notes

References

Cited works

• Abdullaev, Kazim (2014). "The Buddhist culture of ancient Termez in old and recent finds". Parthica. 15.
• Asher, Frederick M. (2020). Sarnath: A critical history of the place where Buddhism began. Getty Research Institute. pp. 2–3, 432–433. ISBN 9781606066164. LCCN 2019019885.
• Asher, Frederick (2011), "On Mauryan Art", in Brown, Rebecca M.; Hutton, Deborah S. (eds.), A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture, Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Art History, Southern Gate, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 421–444, ISBN 9781444396355
• Asher, Frederick M. (2006), "Early Indian Art Reconsidered", in Olivelle, Patrick (ed.), Between the Empires: Society in India 300 BCE to 400 CE, pp. 51–66, ISBN 9780195305326
• Asif, Manan Ahmed (2020), The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India, Harvard University Press, p. 31, ISBN 9780674249868
• Bopearachchi, Osmund (2021) [2017], "Achaemenids and Mauryans: Emergence of Coins and Plastic Arts in India", in Patel, Alka; Daryaee, Touraj (eds.), India and Iran during the Long Durée, Ancient Iran Series, Boston and Leiden: BRILL, originally, Irvine: UCI, Jordan Center for Persian Studies, ISBN 9789004460638
• Coningham, Robin; Young, Ruth (2015), Archaeology of South Asia: From Indus to Asoka, c. 6500 BCE–200 CE, Cambridge World Archaeology Series, New York: Cambridge University Press, p. 465, ISBN 978-0-521-84697-4
• Dolan, Marion (2021), "Art, Architecture, and Astronomy of Buddhism", Decoding Astronomy in Art and Architecture, Springer Nature Switzerland and Springer Praxis Books, pp. 107–128, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-76511-8, ISBN 978-3-030-76510-1
• Falk, Harry (2006), "Tidal waves of Indian history, new interpretations and beyond.", in Olivelle, Patrick (ed.), Between the Empires: Society in India 300 BCE to 400 CE, ISBN 9780195305326
• Fogelin, Lars (2015), An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-1999-4821-5
• Guha, Sudeshna (2010), "Introduction: Archaeology, Photography, Histories", in Guha, Sudeshna (ed.), The Marshall Albums: Photography and Archaeology, Preface by B. D. Chattopadhyaya; Contributors: Sudeshna Guha, Michael S. Dodson, Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Christopher Pinney, Robert Harding, The Alkazi Collection of Photography in association with Mapin Publishing, and support of Archaeological Survey of India, p. 39, ISBN 978-81-89995-32-4
• Harle, J. C. (1994) [1986], The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent (2nd ed.), New Haven and London: Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-06217-6
• Irwin, John (1990), "Origins of form and structure in monumental art", in Werner, Karel (ed.), Symbols in art and religion: the Indian and the comparative perspectives, London: Curzon Press, pp. 46–67
• Mitter, Partha (2001), Indian Art, Oxford History of Art Series, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-284221-8
• Oertel, F. O. (1908), "Excavations at Sarnath", Archaeological Survey of India: Annual Report 1904–1905, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, India, pp. 59–104
• Pabón-Charneco, Arleen (2021), Architecture History, Theory and Preservation: Prehistory to the Middle Ages, London and New York: Routledge, ISBN 978-1-138-32676-7
• Ray, Himanshu Prabha (2014), The Return of the Buddha: Ancient Symbols for a New Nation, Routledge, pp. 78–79, ISBN 978-0-415-71115-9
• Sahni, Daya Ram (1914), Catalogue of the Museum of Archaeology at Sarnath, With an introduction by J. Ph. Vogel, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, India, pp. 28–31
• Singh, Upinder (2017), Political Violence in Ancient India, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-97527-9, LCCN 2017008399
• Tadgell, Christopher (2008), The East: Buddhists, Hindus and the Sons of Heaven, Architecture in Context series II, London and New York: Routledge, ISBN 9780415407526
• Vajpeyi, Ananya (31 October 2012), Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India, Harvard University Press, pp. 188–189, ISBN 978-0-674-04895-9
• Wriggins, Sally Hovey (2021) [1996], Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road, with a foreword by Frederick W. Motes, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-3672-1386-2

Further reading

• Allen, Charles, Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor, 2012, Hachette UK, ISBN 1408703882, 9781408703885, google books
• Huntington, John (2009), Understanding The 5th century Buddhas of Sarnath: A newly identified Mudra and an new comprehension of the Dharmachakramudra (PDF), Orientations (journal), 40, p. 90, Fig.8 see Asher, p.139, note 34
• Mani, B. R. (2012), Sarnath : Archaeology, Art and Architecture, Archaeological Survey of India, p. 58

External links

• Blog with excellent photos
• For Pictures of the famous original "Lion Capital of Ashoka" preserved at the Sarnath Museum which has been adopted as the "National Emblem of India" and the Ashoka Chakra (Wheel) from which has been placed in the center of the "National Flag of India" - See "lioncapital" from Columbia University Website, New York, USA
• National symbols of India

• 7 Things To Know About Ashok Stambh