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133-570: The Lion Capital of Ashoka is the capital , or head, of a column erected by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka in Sarnath , India, c.  250 BCE . Its crowning features 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

266-552: A combination of a cylinder and a slab. The structures of Armenian palaces, churches, courtyards ( Dvin , Aruch , Zvartnots , Ishkhan , Banak, Haghpat , Sanahin , Ani structures) are diverse and unique. In the Renaissance period the feature became of the greatest importance and its variety almost as great as in the Romanesque and Gothic styles. The flat pilaster, which was employed extensively in this period, called for

399-472: A contemporary 3rd century BCE myth. 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. The pillar, thus, has been likened both to the water spout rising to meet the lake-like abacus and also

532-573: A feral population thereafter and eventually became wild. This is suggested to have resulted from the contact of the South Asian dynasties with the Achaemenid and Seleucid empires when hunting lions became a sign of royal prowess. The Achaemenids had inherited the pastime from western Asia. There is evidence from Syria of lion hunts and lion menageries with caged lions in the early fourth-millennium BCE. When emperor Ashoka converted to Buddhism in

665-404: A fine abrasive or even patiently with wood. According to art historian Gail Maxwell, the sandstone received its shine through the application of heat which gives a lasting glass-like finish to the stone. 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." Before it fell, it is thought

798-465: A hard and fast set of canonical rules for the execution of capitals. Two further, specifically Roman orders of architecture have their characteristic capitals, the sturdy and primitive Tuscan capitals , typically used in military buildings, similar to Greek Doric, but with fewer small moldings in its profile, and the invented Composite capitals not even mentioned by Vitruvius, which combined Ionic volutes and Corinthian acanthus capitals, in an order that

931-579: A horizontal tricolour of deep saffron (kesari), white and dark green in equal proportion. In the centre of the white band, there shall be a Wheel in navy blue to represent the Charkha. The design of the Wheel shall be that of the Wheel (Chakra) which appears on the abacus of the Sarnath Lion Capital of Asoka. The diameter of the Wheel shall approximate to the width of the white band. The ratio of

1064-530: A lion, an elephant, a bull, and a horse; the first three are shown at walking pace but the horse is at full gallop. The capital which was carved from a single block of marble 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, according to a 2020 study by Frederick Asher, very fine-grained sandstone found, e.g. in Chunar , can be polished with

1197-549: 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. Christopher Ernest Tadgell considers it unlikely that Ashoka's capital

1330-518: A more elongated form, and sometimes being combined with scrolls, generally within the context of Buddhist stupas and temples . Indo-Corinthian capitals also incorporated figures of the Buddha or Bodhisattvas , usually as central figures surrounded by, and often under the shade of, the luxurious foliage of Corinthian designs. Byzantine capitals vary widely, mostly developing from the classical Corinthian, but tending to have an even surface level, with

1463-570: A period when Islam was forcibly imposed on the native Hindu population. For British colonial historians, this depiction of Islamic despots served to illustrate the beneficence of British rule. Some postcolonial nationalist historians have used the presumed historical oppression of Hindus by Muslims to argue for a more Hindu, rather than secular, India. Buddhism has only a small place within these larger narratives of despotism, destruction, and desecration." According to historian Richard Eaton, instead of arbitrary attacks on Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain temples,

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1596-787: A pillar as a symbol for axis mundi , the axis around which the earth revolves. Irwin acknowledged the existence of numerous precedents of pillars with animal effigies in the ancient world, from the djed -pillars of Pre-dynastic Egypt , to the Sphinx of the Naxians , but argued that Greek examples were in essence classical load-bearing pillars with an animal on top, whereas the Indian pillars of Ashoka were more slender, and closer to monumental stone-versions of dhvajas , portable wooden standards known in India from undetermined antiquity. To J. C. Harle,

1729-453: A place. More than two centuries before Xuanzang's visit, at the very beginning of the fifth century another Chinese visitor, Faxian , had recorded a short description of Sarnath. Faxian had also mentioned some towers, one at the site where the Buddha met the five disciples and another "60 paces north" where he gave the first sermon, the account being more about relating the traditional stories than giving particulars of geography. Neither account

1862-482: A planar rendition of the capital, executed in high relief. This affected the designs of capitals. A traditional 15th-century variant of the Composite capital turns the volutes inwards above stiffened leaf carving. In new Renaissance combinations in capital designs most of the ornament can be traced to Classical Roman sources. The 'Renaissance' was as much a reinterpretation as a revival of Classical norms. For example,

1995-536: 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

2128-527: A storehouse at Sarnath for the artefacts found earlier and 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. John Marshall resolved to put in place plans for a museum to keep the excavated artefacts close to the site. Oertel began his excavations in the vicinity of the Jagat Singh stupa , which lies to

2261-582: Is De architectura by the 1st-century BC Roman architect Vitruvius , who discussed the different proportions of each of these orders and made recommendations for how the column capitals of each order were to be constructed and in what proportions. In the Roman world and within the Roman Empire , the Tuscan order was employed, originally from Italy and with a capital similar to Greek Doric capitals, while

2394-511: Is 2.1 metres (7 ft) tall in total. Its lowest portion is an inverted lotus petal bell which is 61 centimetres (2 ft) high, carved in the Persepolitan style, and decorated with 16 petals. The bell has been interpreted to be a stylized lotus, a common motif. Above the bell is a circular abacus , or a drum-shaped slab, of diameter 86 centimetres (34 in) and height 34 centimetres ( 13 + 1 ⁄ 2  in). Set addorsed , on

2527-703: Is a minor tributary of the Ganges River in Uttar Pradesh , India . It originates at Phulpur in the Prayagraj district and merges into the Ganges near Sarai Mohana in the Varanasi district . The 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) stretch between Sarai Mohana and Sadar, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh is prone to flooding. The name 'Varanasi' is originated from the name of two rivers, Varuna and Assi . According to

2660-507: Is at the top and bottom with a delicate uniting curve. The sloping side of the echinus becomes flatter in the later examples, and in the Colosseum at Rome forms a quarter round (see Doric order ). In versions where the frieze and other elements are simpler the same form of capital is described as being in the Tuscan order . Doric reached its peak in the mid-5th century BC, and was one of

2793-484: Is no cult allegiance here in the symbolism of the Mahachakra [‘great wheel’] and its accessories like the four lions . . . here one is face to face with an acclamation to the single unmanifested and undifferentiated divine phenomenon.'" The significance and meaning of the lotus bell, the lowest member of the capital, has also been discussed in the literature. Agrawala explained in 1964: "The first decorative element of

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2926-585: The Vamana Purana , the river was created by the gods alongside the Assi River. It is also mentioned in the Mahabharata . Varuna derives its name from Varuna , a Hindu god who is associated with sky, oceans and water. The river originates from Melhum at Phulpur in Prayagraj district . Spanning a distance of around 100 kilometers, it flows in an east to southeast direction before merging with

3059-619: The British Museum were initially misinterpreted as capitals. In the Achaemenid Persian capital , the brackets are carved with two heavily decorated back-to-back animals projecting right and left to support the architrave ; on their backs they carry other brackets at right angles to support the cross timbers. The bull is the most common, but there are also lions and griffins . The capital extends below for further than in most other styles, with decoration drawn from

3192-579: The Ionic . Composite capitals line the principal space of the nave. Ionic capitals are used behind them in the side spaces, in a mirror position relative to the Corinthian or composite orders (as was their fate well into the 19th century, when buildings were designed for the first time with a monumental Ionic order). At Hagia Sophia, though, these are not the standard imperial statements. The capitals are filled with foliage in all sorts of variations. In some,

3325-523: The Roman imperial period saw the emergence of the Composite order , with a hybrid capital developed from Ionic and Corinthian elements. The Tuscan and Corinthian columns were counted among the classical canon of orders by the architects of Renaissance architecture and Neoclassical architecture . The Doric capital is the simplest of the five Classical orders : it consists of the abacus above an ovolo molding, with an astragal collar set below. It

3458-670: The Sunga Empire period. Some capitals with strong Greek and Persian influence have been found in northeastern India in the Maurya Empire palace of Pataliputra , dating to the 4th–3rd century BC. Examples such as the Pataliputra capital belong to the Ionic order rather than the later Corinthian order . They are witness to relations between India and the West from that early time. Indo-Corinthian capitals correspond to

3591-579: The Ypres landscape, according to historian Karen Shelby, "the Indian Forces Memorial is the most striking. Through what would be unusual imagery for western eyes, the sculpture asserts an Indian presence. Eschewing traditional western figurative forms of commemoration, the statue is a replication of one of the Asokan lion capitals. ... The connections between the symbols of the lion capital and

3724-584: The axis mundi , the world's axis. 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 Dharma [wheel of

3857-526: The dharmachakra the meaning of peace and internationalism which in his view had prevailed in Ashoka's empire at the time of the erection of the pillars. The imaginative treatment of the lion changed in other ways after emperor Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism and the raising of the lion capital. Not just a symbol of imperial strength or the Buddha's power, the lion became also a symbol of peace. Ashoka's lion capital has been used in memorials on battlefields. In

3990-599: The dosseret required to carry the arch , the springing of which was much wider than the abacus of the capital. On eastern capitals the eagle, the lion and the lamb are occasionally carved, but treated conventionally. There are two types of capitals used at Hagia Sophia : Composite and Ionic. The composite capital that emerged during the Late Byzantine Empire , mainly in Rome, combines the Corinthian with

4123-573: The kingdoms of Israel and Judah starting from the 9th century BCE, as well as in Moab , Ammon , and at Cypriot sites such as the city-state of Tamassos in the Archaic period. The orders, structural systems for organising component parts, played a crucial role in the Greeks' search for perfection of ratio and proportion. The Greeks and Romans distinguished three classical orders of architecture,

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4256-544: The palm tree capital, were the chief types employed by the Egyptians, until under the Ptolemies in the 3rd to 1st centuries BC, various other river plants were also employed, and the conventional lotus capital went through various modifications. Many motifs of Egyptian ornamentation are symbolic , such as the scarab , or sacred beetle, the solar disk , and the vulture . Other common motifs include palm leaves,

4389-524: The papyrus plant, and the buds and flowers of the lotus . Some of the most popular types of capitals were the Hathor , lotus, papyrus and Egyptian composite. Most of the types are based on vegetal motifs. Capitals of some columns were painted in bright colors. Some kind of volute capital is shown in the Assyrian bas-reliefs , but no Assyrian capital has ever been found; the enriched bases exhibited in

4522-409: The 3rd century BC. The top is made of a band of rosettes , eleven in total for the fronts and four for the sides. Below that is a band of bead and reel pattern, then under it a band of waves, generally right-to-left, except for the back where they are left-to-right. Further below is a band of egg-and-dart pattern, with eleven "tongues" or "eggs" on the front, and only seven on the back. Below appears

4655-406: The 4th-7th centuries the capitals of Armenian architectural facades and masonry facades are tall rectangular stones with a total volume, which are converted into a slab by means of a bell. In the structures of the early period ( Ereruyk , Tekor , Tsopk , etc.) they were sculpted with plant and animal images, palm trees. In the 10th century and in the following centuries, capitals are mainly formed by

4788-469: The Asiatic lion primarily to be a West Asiatic animal, and elephants and bulls to be the more characteristic beasts of India. "There is, then, the evidence here," he concludes, "for detailing influenced by Greek art, often through Persian models, in the architecture of the third to second centuries BCE. Sir John Marshall, after drawing attention to such foreign motifs at Sanchi as the ‘Assyrian tree of life,

4921-537: The Asokan pillar-capital. This argument is too weak to convince anybody but the already converted." According to Irwin, "V. S. Agrawala followed Coomaraswamy in refusing to accept the 'Asokan bell' as anything but Indian, but he presented his case as an article of faith, making no attempt to prove it. He saw the bell as an inverted lotus flower 'overflowing' the form of a symbolic vase-of-plenty ( purna-ghata )." Writing in 1911—following two decades of investigations—the historian Vincent Smith concluded that all

5054-491: The Composite order volutes are larger, however, and there is generally some ornament placed centrally between the volutes. Despite this origin, very many Composite capitals in fact treat the two volutes as different elements, each springing from one side of their leafy base. In this, and in having a separate ornament between them, they resemble the Archaic Greek Aeolic order , though this seems not to have been

5187-552: The Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, 1931–1935, the stone shaft was not found but, "its thickness can be estimated from the mortice hole, 20 centimetres (8 in) in diameter, drilled into the stone between the lions' heads." Further, according to Sahni, "Of the wheel itself, four small fragments were found. The ends of thirteen spokes remain on these pieces. Their total number

5320-801: The Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders; each had different types of capitals atop the columns of their hypostyle and trabeate monumental buildings. Throughout the Mediterranean Basin , the Near East , and the wider Hellenistic world including the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and the Indo-Greek Kingdom , numerous variations on these and other designs of capitals co-existed with the regular classical orders. The only architectural treatise of classical antiquity to survive

5453-651: The Etruscans and are found on their tombs. Although the Romans perceived it as especially Italianate, the Tuscan capital found on Roman monuments is in fact closer to the Greek Doric order than to Etruscan examples, its capital being nearby identical with the Doric. The Romans invented the Composite order by uniting the Corinthian order with the Ionic capital, possibly as early as Augustus 's reign. In many versions

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5586-609: The Ganges at Sarai Mohana near Varanasi. It covers a distance of twelve kilometers from the western part of Jaunpur district , near the town of Mungerabad Shahpur, and eventually joins the Ganga River in Varanasi after a journey of 202 kilometers. In February 2023, Denmark and Uttar Pradesh government signed a Rs 1,000 crore MoU for cleaning the Ganga River and its tributary, Varuna. This article related to

5719-619: The Lion Capital can by no means be interpreted as Indo-Persepolitan Bell. It is in every respect the Purna-ghata motif of ancient Indian art and religion, overflowing with luxuriant lotus petals." Writing in 1975, the Indologist John Irwin asked, "Did the carvers of 'Aśokan' pillars derive the idea of their bell from Persepolis, or not?" Irwin added, "So far, only one scholar, the late A. K. Coomaraswamy, has argued in

5852-774: 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." Frederick Asher, summarizing, credits

5985-495: The Sarnath lions and their kin owe all to the arts of others rather than native observation." Sounding a similar theme as Asher, he concludes that it was "all a matter of assimilation and sometimes reinterpretation, rather than a crude choice between indigenous or foreign. But the visual experience of many Ashokan and later city dwellers in India was considerably conditioned by foreign arts, translated to an Indian environment, just as

6118-501: 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. 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

6251-402: The Sarnath pillar and its capital have been proposed. The topmost wheel can rest on the backs of the four lions, or it can be positioned higher (the exact length of the shaft supporting the wheel being unknown). The full pillar is generally reconstructed straightforwardly from its archaeological remains, with the tall column supporting the capital, and the larger wheel on top. Over the centuries,

6384-970: The Senate Vestibule in the United States Capitol in 1807, he introduced six columns that he "Americanized" with ears of corn (maize) substituting for the European acanthus leaves. As Latrobe reported to Thomas Jefferson in August ;1809, Another example is the Delhi Order invented by the British architect Edwin Lutyens for New Delhi 's central palace, Viceroy's House, now the Presidential residence Rashtrapati Bhavan , using elements of Indian architecture . Here

6517-722: The South Asian periphery but as the result of Ashoka's entrepreneurial engagement with the larger world. 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. Author and editor Richard Stoneman arguing more generally about sculpture in early historic South Asia suggests that in figural and decorative sculpture, style and content need to be considered separately. "Techniques of carving," he states, "are not

6650-509: The Tholos of Epidaurus (400 BC) illustrate the transition between the earlier Greek capital, as at Bassae , and the Roman version that Renaissance and modern architects inherited and refined (See the more complete discussion at Corinthian order ). In Roman architectural practice , capitals are briefly treated in their proper context among the detailing proper to each of the " Orders ", in

6783-471: The West Asiatic winged beasts, and grapes, went on to remark that ‘nothing in these carvings is really mimetic, nothing certainly which degrades their art to the rank of a servile school’." In the days leading to India's independence, the Sarnath capital played an important role in the creation of both the state emblem and the national flag of the Dominion of India . They were modelled on the lions and

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6916-427: The abacus are four lions. In this context, it means that only the frontal figures are visible joined at the shoulders, each with its back to another so as to form a pair and two pairs are perpendicular. The lions are each 1.1 metres ( 3 + 3 ⁄ 4  ft) tall and have been described as "life-sized." Oertel describes the lions to be "standing back-to-back" in his original report of 1908. Other authors have used

7049-544: The addorsed capitals of the Achaemenid Empire. But all other aspects are Indian. "The four lions," according to her, "very likely signify "the sovereignty of both Ashoka, since the pillar was erected near the capital of his kingdom and of the truths taught by the Buddha, whose clan, the Shakyas, used the lion as their emblem." Scholars have debated the meanings of the wheels, the large one that had once surmounted

7182-426: The advent of the Roman empire. Others who made noteworthy contributions were the linguist and Buddhism scholar Jean Przyluski , art historian Benjamin Rowland , and cultural historian and Sanskritist Vasudeva S. Agrawala , but rather than the archaeology or history, they concentrated on the symbolism which they thought was given concrete form by features of pre-Buddhist metaphysics. In 1973, John Irwin challenged

7315-434: The archaic Greek had been by the Syrian, the Roman by the Greek, and the Persian by the arts of their whole empire." To Alexander Cunningham in Sanchi in 1851, the addorsed lions in the gateways and especially their claws bore the signs of Greek influence. "Many of the details," continues Stonemen, "such as the manes, do remind one strongly of Greek styles of carving." Citing art historian Sheila Huntington, Stoneman describes

7448-512: The area around Paris. The most varied were carved in 1130–1170. In Britain and France the figures introduced into the capitals are sometimes full of character, these are referred to as historiated (or figured capital). These capitals, however, are not equal to those of the Early English Gothic , in which foliage is treated as if copied from metalwork, and is of infinite variety, being found in small village churches as well as in cathedrals. Armenian capitals are often versions of Byzantine forms. In

7581-451: The art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy argued in 1935 that Buddhist symbolism was not the only one established in the Vedic period which had preceded Buddhism and during which worship did not have a visual representation. The dharmachakra chiefly stood in Coomaraswamy's words for "the Revolution of the year, as Father Time, the flowing tide of all begotten things, dependent on the Sun.” According to Guha, "Coomaraswamy’s interpretations aided

7714-416: The assertions of foreign influence 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

7847-417: The basis of pictorial content and ideological infrastructure; and both seem to be right." A transmission of Hellentistic architectural and decorative features from the Seleucid cities of Central Asia, or the Greco-Bactrian city of Ai-Khanoum were posited by Boardman, who stated, "The Sarnath lions take the same forms a little farther, but again the realistic carving of the flews, the crinkled folds beside

7980-408: The budget allowed, carvers were able to indulge their inventiveness. Capitals were sometimes used to hold depictions of figures and narrative scenes, especially in the Romanesque . In Romanesque architecture and Gothic architecture capitals throughout western Europe present as much variety as in the East, and for the same reason, that the sculptor evolved his design in accordance with the block he

8113-404: The bull and elephant; a lion occupies the other place. The wheel "Ashoka Chakra" from its base has been placed onto the centre of the National Flag of India The Pataliputra capital is a monumental rectangular capital with volutes designs, that was discovered in the palace ruins of the ancient Mauryan Empire capital city of Pataliputra (modern Patna , northeastern India ). It is dated to

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8246-541: 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. 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, to align himself with

8379-495: The capital had a band of vertical ridges, with bells hanging at each corner as a replacement for volutes. The Delhi Order reappears in some later Lutyens buildings including Campion Hall, Oxford . [REDACTED]   This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Chisholm, Hugh , ed. (1911). " Capital (architecture) ". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. Varuna river The Varuna River

8512-449: The capital is often selected for ornamentation; and is often the clearest indicator of the architectural order . The treatment of its detail may be an indication of the building's date. Capitals occur in many styles of architecture, before and after the classical architecture in which they are so prominent. The two earliest Egyptian capitals of importance are those based on the lotus and papyrus plants respectively, and these, with

8645-404: 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." The realism of the lions, the straining tendons of their paws, and the "flesh around

8778-409: The capital was secured to the intact pillar by a metal dowel . The lions supported a larger wheel, also polished, symbolizing the dharmachakra , the Buddhist wheel of the "social order and the sacred law," which is lost except for fragments. It was held in place by a shaft. According to the detailed Catalogue of the Museum of Archaeology at Sarnath , 1914, written by Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni

8911-475: The common practice of planning a conquest involved the swift and strictly defined desecration of those temples that were supported and frequented by royalty. The strategy was not new to India but had been prevalent there considerably before the arrival of the Ghaznavids and the Ghurids . Temples had been the inevitable arenas for the struggle for kingly power. The Turkish invaders followed the settled patterns. Among Hindus and Jains, many temples have survived until

9044-427: The dharmachakra of the capital, and their adoption constituted an attempt to give India a symbolism of ethical sovereignty. On 22 July 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru , the interim prime minister of India , and later the prime minister of the Republic of India proposed formally in the Constituent Assembly of India , which was tasked with creating the Constitution of India : Resolved that the National Flag of India shall be

9177-428: The emperor's and the Buddha's words. The capital today serves as the emblem of the Republic of India . Minus the inverted bell -shaped lotus flower, this has been adopted as the National Emblem of India , seen from another angle, showing the horse on the left and the bull on the right of the Ashoka Chakra in the circular base on which the four Indian lions are standing back to back. On the side shown here there are

9310-412: The entire context, as in Greek Revival . There are numerous newly invented orders, sometimes called nonce orders , where a different ornamentation of the capital is typically a key feature. Within the bounds of decorum , a certain amount of inventive play has always been acceptable within the classical tradition. These became increasingly common after the Renaissance. When Benjamin Latrobe redesigned

9443-434: 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 during the intervening 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

9576-462: The first millennium CE, they remained prominent in the religious life of central and northeastern regions well into the early centuries of the second millennium. This occurred despite Hindu and Jain religious establishments increasingly attracting the support of both the ordinary, non-clerical, public and royalty. "In the historiography of India," according to archaeologist Lars Fogelin, "the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries are often depicted as

9709-508: The four quarters." 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. According to art historian Gail Maxwell, The lions are fashioned so as to affect the viewer by the use of shape, colour, and texture, not necessarily to represent reality, suggestive of

9842-462: The frontal end of a wall, such as the front of the side wall of a temple. The top of an anta is often highly decorated, usually with bands of floral motifs. The designs often respond to an order of columns, but usually with a different set of design principles. In order not to protrude excessively from the wall surface, these structures tend to have a rather flat surface, forming brick-shaped capitals, called "anta capitals". Anta capitals are known from

9975-608: The jaws" have led others to ask about the provenance of some of the art commonly ascribed to the Maurya period. Expanding on the theme further Vincent Smith wrote in 1930 that 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 . The subject

10108-486: The lion capital of Ashoka served as an important artistic model, and inspired many creations throughout India and beyond: Capital (architecture) The Composite order was formalized in the 16th century following Roman Imperial examples such as the Arch of Titus in Rome. It adds Ionic volutes to Corinthian acanthus leaves. From the highly visible position it occupies in all colonnaded monumental buildings,

10241-401: The lowest member of the capital, and the whole 2.1 metres (7 ft) tall, carved out of a single block of sandstone and highly polished, was secured to its monolithic column by a metal dowel . Erected after Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism , it commemorated the site of Gautama Buddha 's first sermon some two centuries before. The capital eventually fell to the ground and was buried. It

10374-479: The main motif, a flame palmette , growing among pebbles. The Sarnath capital is a pillar capital, sometimes also described as a "stone bracket", discovered in the archaeological excavations at the ancient Buddhist site of Sarnath . The pillar displays Ionic volutes and palmettes . It has been variously dated from the 3rd century BCE during the Mauryan Empire period, to the 1st century BCE, during

10507-548: The many cultures that the Persian Empire conquered including Egypt , Babylon , and Lydia . There are double volutes at the top and, inverted, bottom of a long plain fluted section which is square, although the shaft of the column is round, and also fluted. The earliest Aegean capital is that shown in the frescoes at Knossos in Crete (1600 BC); it was of the convex type, probably moulded in stucco . Capitals of

10640-455: The mid-5th century BC. The style prevailed in Ionian lands, centred on the coast of Asia Minor and Aegean islands . The order's form was far less set than the Doric, with local variations persisting for many decades. In the Ionic capitals of the archaic Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (560 BC) the width of the abacus is twice that of its depth, consequently the earliest Ionic capital known

10773-513: The mouth, is not a feature of Persian or eastern work at all, but a reflection of the realistic rendering of this feature by Hellenistic Greek artists, who could effectively reduce the force of the compact eastern forms by such treatment. It remains odd that Panthera leo persica , whose distinctive belly hair (unlike the African lion) was carefully depicted by Mesopotamian artists, whence by Greek and then Persian, should lack this feature here; indeed

10906-462: The much more abundant Corinthian-style capitals crowning columns or pilasters, which can be found in the northwestern Indian subcontinent , particularly in Gandhara , and usually combine Hellenistic and Indian elements. These capitals are typically dated to the first century BC, and constitute important elements of Greco-Buddhist art . The Classical design was often adapted, usually taking

11039-638: The museum since. Daya Ram Sahni , Assistant Superintendent of the ASI, and later its Director-General, supervised the organisation and labelling of the museum's collection and in 1914 completed the Catalogue of the Museum of Archaeology at Sarnath ". Oertel's detailed report, "Excavations at Särnäth", had appeared in 1908 in the Archæological Survey of India , Annual Report, 1904–5. The capital

11172-437: The negative. He alone tried to prove that Indian artists had arrived independently at their form of bell. The logic of his argument, however, was weak." According to Irwin, Coomaraswamy had picked some "untypical" details of reliefs of a century later in which the lotus had been stylized to argue that "the petals, stamen and pericarp of the lotus flower as stylized ... must have inspired the rope-moulding and abacus respectively of

11305-440: The non-elite laity consisted of little more than serving as landlords." According to Eaton, "Detached from a Buddhist laity, these establishments had by this time become dependent on the patronage of local royal authorities, with whom they were identified." Echoing the same theme, art historian Frederick Asher says, " Muhammad of Ghor , who did conquer Benares in 1193–94 ... might have plundered Sarnath, more likely for whatever wealth

11438-510: The only complete architectural textbook to have survived from classical times, the De architectura , by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, better known as Vitruvius , dedicated to the emperor Augustus . The various orders are discussed in Vitruvius' books iii and iv. Vitruvius describes Roman practice in a practical fashion. He gives some tales about the invention of each of the orders, but he does not give

11571-462: The orders accepted by the Romans. Its characteristics are masculinity, strength and solidity. The Doric capital consists of a cushion-like convex moulding known as an echinus, and a square slab termed an abacus. In the Ionic capital , spirally coiled volutes are inserted between the abacus and the ovolo. This order appears to have been developed contemporaneously with the Doric, though it did not come into common usage and take its final shape until

11704-834: The ornamentation undercut with drills. The block of stone was left rough as it came from the quarry, and the sculptor evolved new designs to his own fancy, so that one rarely meets with many repetitions of the same design. One of the most remarkable designs features leaves carved as if blown by the wind; the finest example being at the 8th-century Hagia Sophia (Thessaloniki) . Those in the Cathedral of Saint Mark, Venice  (1071) specially attracted John Ruskin 's fancy. Others appear in Sant'Apollinare in Classe , Ravenna  (549). The capital in San Vitale, Ravenna  (547) shows above it

11837-431: The other two had come off before being buried and upon excavation required affixing. Of these damaged, one lion was missing the lower jaw at the time of the initial 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

11970-456: The pillar and copper for the crown. 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

12103-465: The pillars and their capitals, appropriate for these royal edicts, suggests that the pillars were made to carry the inscriptions." 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

12236-405: The pillars that were considered Ashokan had been erected by the orders of emperor Ashoka during the twenty-five-year period from 257 BCE to 232 BCE. Setting the stage for future debate he suggested that their execution was "essentially foreign." Following up in 1922, John Marshall was the first scholar to suggest that the Sarnath capital was the work of foreign artisans working in India. Comparing

12369-573: The placing of the 'Sarnath wheel,' found broken and not physically connected with the lions on the pillar during Oertel’s excavations, on the Indian national flag." Guha adds, "The historian and superintendent of the Museums Branch of the Archaeological Survey of India (1946–51), V. S. Agrawala, who was in charge of making the plaster cast in 1946, followed him in extending its meaning as the chakra dhvaja or 'the wheel flag.' Without invoking any new evidence Agrawala laboured to explain that 'there

12502-502: The postwar peaceful rhetoric are striking. Asoka’s acceptance of Buddhism was the result of witnessing the devastation after the successful Battle of Kalinga (261 B.C.E.). Affected by the bloodshed, he was filled with remorse and resolved to pursue a non-violent and peaceful approach to life. The latter symbolism is a fitting one in this context as Ypres ("leper" in Flemish) is also known as a 'city of peace'." Various reconstructions of

12635-505: The present day. Whereas royal temples were raided and brought down, the ones attended by ordinary people were often left undisturbed. "The same could have occurred with Buddhist institutions focused on the laity, had they existed." according to Fogelin, "However, by the thirteenth century CE, Buddhist monasteries in the Gangetic Plain and northeastern India were prominently supported by local and regional kings, and their relations with

12768-465: The prestige and universality of the Buddha. According to cultural historian Vasudeva Sharan Agrawala , the dharmachakra represented the body of the Buddha and the lions the throne. In his view, the Sarnath capital is equally Vedic and Buddhist in the significance of its various parts. According to the Indologist John Irwin, the wheels on the rim of the abacus do not represent the Buddhist wheels of

12901-575: The religions of India, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan , also advised Nehru in the choice. The state emblem of the Dominion of India was accepted by the cabinet on 29 December 1947, with the resolution of a national motto set aside for a future date. Nehru also explicitly displaced the spinning wheel, the charkha , at the centre of the flag of the Indian National Congress , the main instrument of Indian nationalism. He also attempted to give

13034-500: The right bank of the Varuna river and a pillar nearby erected by Ashoka that was, "glistening and smooth as ice." He mentioned a monastery in "Mrigdeva", or Deer Park 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) away. Here there was another pillar erected by Ashoka about 21 metres (70 ft) high and shining "as bright as jade." In the view of historian Frederick Asher, Xuanzang's account sometimes employed monuments as symbolic devices to fix miracles in

13167-416: 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 ). The abacus and its animals have been related to Lake Anavatapta of

13300-605: The route of their development in early Imperial Rome . Equally, where the Greek Ionic volute is usually shown from the side as a single unit of unchanged width between the front and back of the column, the Composite volutes are normally treated as four different thinner units, one at each corner of the capital, projecting at some 45° to the façade. The Lion Capital of Ashoka is an iconic capital which consists of four Asiatic lions standing back to back, on an elaborate base that includes other animals. A graphic representation of it

13433-464: The sacred law but chariot wheels of the period which typically had 24 spokes. According to the anthropologist Lars Fogelin, as the only capital to exhibit wheel motifs, the lion capital at Sarnath is thought to symbolize the wheel of the moral law in "a specifically Buddhist sense of the term." Overall, the symbolism of the Sarnath column and capital is thought to be more Buddhist than secular. According to cultural historian and museologist Sudeshna Guha,

13566-473: The same as the choice of subject matter, and choices of decorative detail lie somewhere between. Copying is not the only model: interaction and creative re-use may be more rewarding concepts." He describes the differing interpretations by art historians John Boardman and Margaret Cool Root of the extent of Greek influence on the art of Persepolis . Whereas Boardman sees "similarities, and probably influence, in technique and style," Root discounts influence "on

13699-459: The same expression in describing the lions' attitude , including in a 2014 study and a 2017 review, or have quoted Oertel using it, in a 2020 study. The archaeologist Kazim Abdullaev , who analysed the pose of the Sarnath lions in a 2014 study, concluded they were seated on account of their backs sloping more steeply upwards than those of standing lions. They have been described as seated in some other studies. Two lions were undamaged. The heads of

13832-666: The scrolls was an abacus, more shallow than that in Doric examples, and again ornamented with egg-and-dart. It has been suggested that the foliage of the Greek Corinthian capital was based on the Acanthus spinosus , that of the Roman on the Acanthus mollis . Not all architectural foliage is as realistic as Isaac Ware's ( illustration, right ) however. The leaves are generally carved in two "ranks" or bands, like one leafy cup set within another. The Corinthian capitals from

13965-617: The second, concave type, include the richly carved examples of the columns flanking the Tomb of Agamemnon in Mycenae (c. 1100 BC): they are carved with a chevron device, and with a concave apophyge on which the buds of some flowers are sculpted. Volute capitals, also known as proto-Aeolic capitals, are encountered in Iron-Age Southern Levant and ancient Cyprus , many of them in royal architectural contexts in

14098-541: The site of his first sermon and the birthplace of the Buddhist order. Sarnath was pillaged again in 1894 when a large number of bricks were carried away for use as ballast in a nearby railway line. 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 was appointed superintending engineer at Varanasi, he constructed

14231-536: The small, lush leaves appear to be caught up in the spinning of the scrolls – clearly, a different, nonclassical sensibility has taken over the design. The capitals at Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna ( Italy ) show wavy and delicate floral patterns similar to decorations found on belt buckles and dagger blades. Their inverted pyramidal form has the look of a basket. Capitals in early Islamic architecture are derived from Graeco-Roman and Byzantine forms, reflecting

14364-511: The southwest of the Dhamek . He proceeded to the Main Shrine, north of the stupa. It was to the west of this shrine that he found the buried stump and fragments of the Ashokan pillar at Sarnath, and soon its lion capital. The Museum of Archaeology at Sarnath , now Archaeological Museum Sarnath , the first site museum of the ASI, was completed in 1910. The lion capital has been displayed in

14497-468: The spot at which the Buddha had preached his first sermon. For his investigations, Cunningham preferred to glean information from foreign sources. A French translation by Stanislas Julien of the travels of the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (then known as Hiuan-tsang) in India from 629 CE to 645 CE had appeared in 1857–1858. In his account, Xuanzang mentioned a tall stupa to the northeast of Varanasi off

14630-634: The technique went back to the Vedic Age and was inherited by the Mauryans. 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

14763-423: The time of the Doric order. An anta capital can sometimes be qualified as a "sofa" capital or a "sofa anta capital" when the sides of the capital broaden upward, in a shape reminiscent of a couch or sofa . Anta capitals are sometimes hard to distinguish from pilaster capitals, which are rather decorative, and do not have the same structural role as anta capitals. The origins of the Tuscan order lie with

14896-418: The training of most of the masons producing them. In both periods small columns are often used close together in groups, often around a pier that is in effect a single larger column, or running along a wall surface. The structural importance of the individual column is thereby greatly reduced. In both periods, though there are common types, the sense of a strict order with rules was not maintained, and when

15029-464: The true eternal law]." 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), and the smaller wheels for the solstices and the equinoxes . According to Raymond Allchin , " The abacus depicts four Dharmacakras facing the four quarters, interspersed by four noble beasts, who in early Buddhist texts represent

15162-490: The upper and lower lids. Although the stones were lost, one pin had remained embedded in the upper left lid of one of the lions at the time of the discovery. The first of the existing visual portrayals of lions in South Asia are the Maurya columns such as the Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath. Some scholars believe that lions were introduced into India from western Asia as a quarry for royal hunts, implying that they became

15295-697: The volutes of ancient Greek and Roman Ionic capitals had lain in the same plane as the architrave above them. This had created an awkward transition at the corner – where, for example, the designer of the temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis in Athens had brought the outside volute of the end capitals forward at a 45-degree angle. This problem was more satisfactorily solved by the 16th-century architect Sebastiano Serlio , who angled outwards all volutes of his Ionic capitals. Since then use of antique Ionic capitals, instead of Serlio's version, has lent an archaic air to

15428-469: The wake of large-scale killing and destruction by his army in Kalinga , or what is today Odisha in eastern India, he gave a new direction to the imaginative treatment of the lion: from being a symbolic object of royal domination, the lion became an emblem of royal prowess. According to architectural historian Pushkar Sohoni , "In early Buddhist architecture, the lion, along with the horse, the elephant, and

15561-585: The west of the Dhamekh. Colin Mackenzie visited in 1815 and found some sculpture which he donated to the Asiatic Society of Bengal . In 1861 Alexander Cunningham attempted to dig down into the Dhamekh from its top to uncover relics. He soon abandoned the effort, but not before noting that votive models of the stupa were scattered in the vicinity, lending credence to the view that the Dhamekh marked

15694-540: The width to the length of the flag shall ordinarily be 2:3. Although several members in the assembly had proposed other meanings for India's national symbols, Nehru's meaning came to prevail. On 11 December 1947, the Constituent Assembly adopted the resolution. Nehru was well-acquainted with the history of Ashoka, having written about it in his books Letters from a father to his daughter and The Discovery of India . The major contemporary philosopher of

15827-510: 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

15960-483: The zebu, were considered auspicious. All these animals appeared as a standard quartet on many Mauryan pillars." 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. The three other animals on

16093-723: Was accepted in December 1947. Sarnath had a history of visits and some exploration in the 18th and 19th centuries. William Hodges , the painter visited in 1780 and made a record of the Dhamek Stupa , the most conspicuous monument at the site. In 1794, Jonathan Duncan , the Commissioner of Benares noted diggings for bricks carried out by Jagat Singh, the Dewan of the Raja of Benares. These had taken place 150 metres (490 ft) to

16226-402: Was adopted as the official Emblem of India in 1950. This powerfully carved lion capital from Sarnath stood a top a pillar bearing the edicts of the emperor Ashoka . Like most of Ashoka's capitals, it is brilliantly polished. Located at the site of Buddha's first sermon and the formation of the Buddhist order, it carried imperial and Buddhist symbols, reflecting the universal authority of both

16359-414: 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. Harry Falk , while categorically stating a Mauryan debt to "the stonework inherited from Achaemenid Iran," of the appearance during

16492-479: Was carving, but in the west variety goes further, because of the clustering of columns and piers . The earliest type of capital in Lombardy and Germany is known as the cushion-cap, in which the lower portion of the cube block has been cut away to meet the circular shaft. These types were generally painted at first with geometrical designs, afterwards carved. The finest carving comes from France, especially from

16625-684: Was cracked across the neck just above the lotus, and two of its lions had sustained damage to their heads. It 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 end of the Indus Valley Civilisation 1,600 years earlier. Their sudden appearance, as well as similarities to Persepolitan columns of Iran before

16758-615: Was developed in the lands occupied by the Dorians , one of the two principal divisions of the Greek race. It became the preferred style of the Greek mainland and the western colonies (southern Italy and Sicily ). In the Temple of Apollo , Syracuse (c. 700 BC), the echinus moulding has become a more definite form: this in the Parthenon reaches its culmination, where the convexity

16891-474: 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 much better condition, though not undamaged. It

17024-407: Was imagined to be stored there ... than for the sake of iconoclastic destruction." Sarnath did not have unbroken history. Very few Buddhists remained in India after the 12th century. Buddhists from Tibet, Burma, and Southeast Asia did make pilgrimages to South Asia from the 13th to the 17th centuries, but their most common destination was Bodhgaya , the site of the Buddha's enlightenment, not Sarnath

17157-482: Was otherwise quite similar in proportions to the Corinthian, itself an order that Romans employed much more often than Greeks. The increasing adoption of Composite capitals signalled a trend towards freer, more inventive (and often more coarsely carved) capitals in Late Antiquity . The anta capital is not a capital which is set on top of column, but rather on top of an anta , a structural post integrated to

17290-487: Was presumably thirty-two." The original diameter of the surmounting wheel was conjectured to have been 0.84 metres ( 2 + 3 ⁄ 4  ft). The wheel fragments are on display in the Sarnath Museum. According to the museum's Catalogue , the lions did not have eyeballs; instead, precious stones were initially placed in the eye sockets. The stones were held in place by iron pins passing through fine holes in

17423-580: Was taken up by Mortimer Wheeler who added that until the advent of the Mauryas Indian art had not strayed beyond the confines of folk art, and on that basis speculated that two or three generations after the downfall of the Achaemenid empire Hellenistic craftsmen working in Persepolis had been hired by emperor Ashoka. Wheeler did suggest that free-standing pillars had not appeared in Europe before

17556-501: Was virtually a bracket capital. A century later, in the temple on the Ilissus , the abacus has become square (See the more complete discussion at Ionic order ). According to the Roman architect Vitruvius , the Ionic order's main characteristics were beauty, femininity, and slenderness, derived from its basis on the proportion of a woman. The volutes of an Ionic capital rest on an echinus, almost invariably carved with egg-and-dart. Above

17689-508: Was written on-site, but from memory upon returning to China. Giving more literal credence to the accounts of Faxian and Xuanzang, the museum curator Sushma Jansari suggests that they could imply the existence of a greater number of Ashokan pillars during early historic South Asia and its immediate aftermath than had remained at the time of the 18th- and 19th-century British investigations. Although Buddhism and Buddhist monasticism had suffered setbacks in northwestern and southwestern India in

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