Mauryan Art and Architecture: Pillars, Palaces, and Sculpture

A pillar is a tall upright column. Ashoka had stone pillars set up across north India. Many carry his edicts, which are royal orders cut into stone.

1. How were Mauryan pillars different from Persian pillars?

A Mauryan pillar was carved from one block of rock. Such a single block is called a monolith. The pillars are rock-cut, so they show the carver’s skill.

Pillars were also raised in the Achaemenid (Persian) empire. Those pillars were built in pieces by a mason. A mason is a worker who builds with stone.

Think of a pole cut from one tree trunk and a pole joined from many short logs. The first is one piece. The second is made of parts.

Many students assume the Mauryans copied Persian pillars. The safe exam line is the contrast. Mauryan pillars were monoliths. Persian pillars were built in pieces.

The top of each pillar was carved as a capital. A capital is the crowning block on a column. Capitals show animals such as the bull, the lion and the elephant.

No source used for this lesson gives a firm count of Ashoka’s pillars. So avoid quoting one number unless a question gives it.

2. Where do the pillar capitals survive?

Some Ashokan pillars still have their carved capital. The animal stands on an abacus. An abacus is a flat square or round slab. It is decorated with stylised lotuses. Stylised means drawn in a simple, patterned way.

Learn these five names as one group. Sarnath is the most famous of them.

3. What was the Mauryan polish?

Mauryan stone often has a smooth, shiny surface. This finish is called the Mauryan polish. The Sarnath lions are heavily polished, and this is typical of the Mauryan period. The Didarganj figure has a polished surface too.

Use polish as a clue to spot Mauryan work. Do not add claims about how it was made. Exams ask only that it is a Mauryan feature.

Sarnath is near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. The Buddha gave his first sermon there. Ashoka raised a pillar at the spot. Its capital is the most famous Mauryan sculpture.

4. What are the five parts of the Sarnath Lion Capital?

Ashoka built the capital to mark the Buddha’s first sermon. This event is called the Dhammachakrapravartana, or the turning of the wheel of the law. The capital was excavated in 1904 to 1906.

It originally had five parts. They are the shaft, a lotus-bell base, a drum, four lions and a crowning wheel.

The drum has four animals walking clockwise. The abacus shows a bull, a horse, an elephant and a lion. It also shows a wheel (chakra) with 24 spokes in four directions.

Four lions sit back to back above the drum. Their manes and muscles are carved with great care.

Many students think the wheel is still on top. It is not. The Dharmachakra wheel lies broken. It is shown in the site museum at Sarnath.

5. What exactly did India adopt as its State Emblem?

The State Emblem is an adaptation of the Sarnath Lion Capital. An adaptation is a changed copy, not the object itself. The original is kept in the Sarnath Museum.

The emblem uses the side view, or profile, of the capital. In that view only three lions show. A Dharma Chakra sits in the centre. A bull is on the right. A galloping horse is on the left. Outlines of wheels show at the far right and left.

The bell-shaped lotus is left out. Below the profile is the motto Satyameva Jayate, which means “Truth alone triumphs”. It is written in Devanagari script.

A common mistake is to say the emblem is the whole capital. The capital has four lions and a lotus base. The emblem shows three lions and no lotus.

The State Emblem of India (Prohibition of Improper Use) Act, 2005 controls how the emblem may be used.

UNESCO keeps a World Heritage List. Its purpose is to protect shared heritage of outstanding universal value. A site on the list is a World Heritage Site.

6. What did UNESCO list on 25 July 2026?

On 25 July 2026 the “Ancient Buddhist Site of Sarnath” was inscribed on the list. Inscribed means formally added. The decision came at the 48th session of the World Heritage Committee in Busan, South Korea. It is India’s 45th property on the list.

The listing has two parts. They are the Chaukhandi Stupa and the Archaeological Remains of Sarnath. The remains include the Dhamekh Stupa, the Dharmrajika Stupa, the Mulagandhakuti Vihara and the Ashokan Pillar. All lie within Varanasi.

The site was listed under criteria (iii) and (vi). Criterion (iii) points to Sarnath as one of the four principal Buddhist pilgrimage places. Criterion (vi) points to the direct link with the Buddha’s first sermon and his first disciples.

The Ashokan Pillar is part of the listed remains. The capital that once topped it is shown in the Sarnath Museum.

The path took years. India put Sarnath on its Tentative List in 1998. A Tentative List is a country’s advance list of sites. The nomination went to the Committee in January 2025. Experts from ICOMOS, an advisory body of UNESCO, visited from 24 to 29 September 2025.

Lumbini in Nepal, the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya and Sarnath are now all on the list.

Mauryan artists also worked in living rock. They cut caves and carved large animals and people. Here are four examples.

7. What are the Barabar caves, and who got the Lomas Rishi cave?

The Barabar caves lie in the Barabar Hills near Gaya in Bihar. Seven rock-cut caves stand on the twin hills of Barabar and Nagarjuni. Four are on Barabar and three are on Nagarjuni. Rock-cut means cut into living rock, not built from blocks.

Ashoka gave the Lomas Rishi cave to the Ajivika sect. Some books spell it Lomus Rishi. The Ajivikas were a group of ascetics, or monks who gave up home life. Their central belief was Niyati, which means fate.

The caves are cut in granite. Their inner surface is highly polished. Names such as Lomas Rishi come from old folklore, not from the inscriptions.

8. Why is the Lomas Rishi cave a landmark?

The cave front has a semicircular arch. This is a chaitya arch. A chaitya is a Buddhist prayer hall. The arch carries a frieze of elephants in high relief. A frieze is a band of carving. High relief means the figures stand out strongly from the wall.

This is the first known use of the chaitya arch in stone. The same arch was copied later in caves such as Ajanta and Kanheri.

Inside, the hall is rectangular. A circular chamber lies at the back.

Two inscriptions date the gifts. The Sudama cave inscription says Ashoka gave the four Barabar caves to Ajivika monks in 261 BCE. Dasaratha, Ashoka’s grandson, later gave caves at Nagarjuni.

9. What is the rock-cut elephant at Dhauli?

At Dhauli in Odisha, a huge elephant is carved out of the rock. It is shaped in the round. This means it looks like a solid body, not a flat picture.

An Ashokan rock edict is carved at the same site. Dhauli therefore joins art and edict in one place.

10. Is the Didarganj Yakshi really Mauryan?

The Didarganj Yakshi is a life-size standing woman carved from sandstone. She stands free of any wall. She holds a chauri, or fly whisk, in her right hand. Her left hand is broken. Her surface is polished.

Many scholars date her to the Mauryan period, around the third century BCE. Others think this skill belongs to a later stage of art. So write “often dated to the Mauryan period”.

The label is also debated. A yakshi is a nature spirit, shown as a woman. Doris Meth Srinivasan argued in 2005 that the figure is a ganika, a courtesan at the royal court.

The figure was found near Patna. Older books place her in the Patna Museum. Today she is shown in the Bihar Museum, Patna.

Pataliputra, near modern Patna, was the Mauryan capital. Little of it is left. Written accounts and new digs help fill the gap.

11. What did Megasthenes write about Pataliputra?

Megasthenes was a Greek ambassador at the court of Chandragupta Maurya. His own book survives only in fragments. Later writers quote it.

Strabo quotes him on the size of the city. Pataliputra was 80 stades long and 15 wide. A stade is an old Greek measure of length. The city was shaped like a parallelogram.

A wooden wall surrounded it, with loopholes for shooting arrows. A ditch ran in front. It served as a defence and also took the city’s sewage.

Another account of his words adds 570 towers and 64 gates. Take care with one point. The sources describe a wooden wall, not a wooden palace.

12. What is the ASI doing at Kumhrar?

Kumhrar is an area of Patna. Remains of ancient Pataliputra were dug up there. They include a hall believed to have had 80 pillars. The hall is believed to be part of the Mauryan palace.

The hall came to light in digs from 1912 to 1915 and again from 1951 to 1955. In the late 1990s groundwater seepage began to waterlog the ruins. In 2004 the site was covered with soil and sand to protect it.

On 1 December 2024 the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) began to uncover some buried stone pillars. Director General Yadubir Singh Rawat started the work. The aim is to check the pillars and the water table.

What the hall was used for is debated. An ASI archaeologist said it is believed to have hosted the Third Buddhist Council. Treat that as a belief, not proof.

This also shows why stone survives better than wood. The pillars lay buried, yet they are still there to study.

For centuries nobody could read the script on the pillars. Two steps changed that. One was reading the script. The other was matching a title with a king.

13. When did Prinsep read the script?

James Prinsep worked in the mint of the East India Company. A mint is a place where coins are made. He deciphered the Brahmi script and also Kharosthi. Deciphering means working out the meaning of an unknown script.

Books give slightly different years. One textbook says “the 1830s”. It gives 1838 for the reading of Asokan Brahmi. Another account says Prinsep read a Delhi pillar in 1837.

So write “in the 1830s” unless a question names a year. This is a safe answer.

Most edicts name their author only as Devanampiya Piyadasi. It means “Beloved-of-the-Gods, He Who Looks On With Affection”.

14. Who proved that Piyadassi was Ashoka?

The title Piyadassi did not name Ashoka. Someone had to match the two. That scholar was George Turnour.

Turnour was a British civil servant in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. He learned Pali. Pali is the language of early Buddhist texts.

He used the Dipavamsa, a Pali chronicle, to show that King Piyadassi was Ashoka. Many students call him a Sri Lankan scholar. That is wrong.

Proof came later. In 1915 another edict was found that named Asoka. This confirmed the link.

This is the most tested story in the topic. Learn the people, the pillar and the chronicle.

15. How did Firoz Shah move the Topra pillar?

Firoz Shah Tughlaq ruled Delhi in the 14th century. He had two Ashokan pillars brought to Delhi. One stood at Tobra, or Topra, in the hills. The other stood near Meerut.

His court writer Afif tells how the Tobra pillar was lowered. People gathered at the site. They piled cotton of the silk-cotton (Sembal) tree around it. When the earth at the base was dug away, the pillar fell gently onto the bed.

Another account adds details. The pillar was wrapped in reeds and uncured hides. It was set on a cart with 42 wheels. Each wheel had a rope pulled by 200 people.

The Tobra pillar was raised again at Firozabad, beside the Jama Masjid. The Meerut pillar went to the Sultan’s hunting palace. Its base inscription gives 1356 for that move.

16. Which chronicle holds the painted picture of the move?

CDS (II) 2021 asked where the painted illustration of the moving of the Ashoka Pillar at Topra is found. The answer is the Sirat-i-Firuz Shahi.

The trap is the option list. Two names sound almost alike. They are Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi and Sirat-i-Firuz Shahi. Only the second holds the picture.

Do not mix this up with Afif’s text account of the move. The story and the painting are two different things. The painting is a 14th-century illustration.