Delhi-Topra

Discovery of Delhi–Topra

Harry Falk, Asokan Sites and Artefacts, 215–219

Discovery

See "Early Visitors" below; the first full description appeared in Jones 1788. A reading of some phrases was published by

Prinsep 1837a: 470+473.

Early Visitors:

Generally, the reports on the two pillars in Delhi tend to mix facts. In particular the aspect of "hunting" and the subterranean passage are transferred from the Mirath pillar to the Topra pillar:

Father Monserrate (1580): "In a valley three miles from Delinum he [Peruzius = Fīrūz Shah] built a wonderfully beautiful and very costly palace. On the terrace in front of it he set a solid marble column all in one piece, thirty feet high and about five feet thick. He also had a subterranean passage made to Old Delinum... (a distance of nearly forthy stadia [7 km])" (Hoyland 1922: 97).

Thomas Coryat (1612-17): "I have beene in a citie in this countrie, called Detee [Delhi], where Alexander the Great joyned battell with Porus, K[ing] of India, and conquered him; and in token of his victorie erected a brasse pillar, which remaineth there to this day" (W. Foster 1921: 248). Coryat may have confused the iron pillar with a stone pillar of Aśoka, which he cer-tainly had seen, as arises from a note by Terry who was responsible for the 1655 edition of Coryat's travels: "I was told by Tom Coryat (who took special notice of this place) that he, being in the city of Dellee, observed a very great pillar of mar-ble, with a Greek inscription upon it which Time hath almost quite worn out, erected (as he supposed) there and then by great Alexander, to preserve the memory of that famous victory [over King Porus]" (W. Foster 1921: 248 note 1).

Padre Tieffenthaler (around 1750): "A peu de distance des fragments de l'Obélisque de Feros [cf. Mirat pillar) en est un autre dont la figure est celle d'un parallelogramme. Il est épais d'une aune & demie, & haut de 102. On prétend qu'il a été taillé & élevé par un homme prodigieusement fort, nommé Bim" (Bernoulli 1791: 130).

R. Heber reports in December 29, 1824, obviously confusing it with the iron pillar at the Qutb Minar: "(The Firoz Kotla) is chiefly remarkable for a high black pillar of cast metal, called Firoze's walking-stick. This was originally a Hindoo work, the emblem, I apprehend, of Siva, which stood in a temple in the same spot, and concerning which there was a tradition, (...), that while it stood the children of Brahma were to rule Indraput. On the conquest of the country by the Mussulmans the vanity of the prediction was shewn, and Firoze enclosed it within the court of his palace, as a trophy of the victory of Islam over idola-try. It is covered with inscriptions, mostly Persian and Arabic, but that which is evidently the original, and, probably, contains the prophecy, is in a character now obsolete and unknown, though apparently akin to the Nagree" (Heber 1828: 292f.).

E. HULTZSCH, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, XV–XVII

THE DELHI-TOPRA PILLAR (Text, p. 119).

This famous monument 'is a single shaft of pale pinkish sandstone, 42 feet 7 inches in length, of which the upper portion, 35 feet in length, has received a very high polish, while the remainder is left quite rough.' It used to be known by the names of 'Bhima-sēna's pillar', 'Golden pillar', 'Firoz Shah's pillar', and 'Delhi-Siwālik pillar'. Shams-i Sirāj, a historian of Firoz Shah (A.D. 1351-88), informs us that it stood originally 'in the village of Tobra, in the district of Salaura and Khizrābād, in the hills'; that Sultan Fīröz had it carried to Delhi; and that he erected it again on the top of his palace at Fīrözābād. From Tobra near Khizrābād, which was ninety kōs from Delhi, the column was carried on a truck with forty-two wheels to the bank of the Jamna, whence it was floated down the river to Firōzābād (Delhi) on a number of large boats.

Cunningham (Arch. Reports, 14. 78 f.) identified the village of Tobra, where the pillar stood originally, with the present Tõpra, on the direct line between Ambālā and Sirsāvā, eighteen miles to the south of Sädhörä, and twenty-two miles to the south-west of Khizrābād. The pillar is standing to the present day on the roof of the three-storied citadel (kõțlā) of Firoz Shah outside the 'Delhi Gate' to the south-east of modern Delhi. An elevation of the building, with the pillar on the top of it, was published in 1788 in the first volume of the Asiatic Researches, p. 379, and a sketch of it in 1803 in vol. 7, p. 175, plate 4.

The Delhi-Toprä pillar bears seven edicts of Aśoka, of which the last and longest is unique, while other specimens of the first six edicts have been discovered elsewhere. The first six edicts and the eleven first lines of the seventh edict are arranged in four columns on the north, west, south, and east faces of the pillar; the eleven remaining lines of the seventh edict run all round the pillar.

Inscriptions at this site