________________
JUNE, 1909.)
ASOKA NOTES.
153
The passage concerning Aboka's baildings is differently translated by Laidlay, who writes :• He caused therefore a chapel to ho raised over the steps, and upon the middle one erected a full length statue of Foe) six toises high. Behind the chapel was erected a pillar thirty cubits high, and thereon was placed a lion. Within the pillar on the four sides were images of Foe. The interior and the exterior were polished and resplendent as crystal.'
Concerning the measurements the notes state that six toises' are equivalent to about 60 English foet, and that the chow (chevu), or cubit, is variously estimated, some authorities making it out to be 0.610, and others to be 0.4575 of a mètre.
Giles paraphrases the Yellow Spring' as meaning the gate of bell,' and makes the image to be only 16 feet in height. The concluding clauses he renders thus : Inside the column at the four sides are images of Buddha. Both from inside and outside it is transparent (not 'shining'), and as clean [?.clear') as glass.'
Beal too makes out the image to be 16 feet high, and the pillar 30 cubits. Within the pillar,' according to him, on the four sides are figures of Buddha, both within and without it is shining and bright as glass.'
Thus it appears that the four versions differ much in detail.
Legge's statement that the statue was 16 cubits high, and Laidlay's that its height was 6 French toises = 60 English feet, are contradicted by Giles and Beal who state the height as 16 (Chinese ) feet. The Chinese foot,' I believe, does not differ much from the English. Perhaps we are justified in assuming the correct version to be '16 feet.' All translators are agreed that the pillar was 80 ohow, or oubits,' in height, equivalent to somewhere about 45 or 50 English feet, an estimate in accordance with the known ineasurements of socie of Asoka's columns.
The monument evidently was composod, like the other Asokan monolithic pillars, of fine grey sandstone polished, by an art now lost, as highly as glass. Travellers have mistaken the material of Firoz Shah's pillar'--the Asöka monument brought by him to Delhi-for iron, brass, and so forth. Similarly, the high polish of the Sankaśya pillar evidently puzzled the Chinese visitor and induced him to believe that like glass the stone was translucent. The base of the pillar probably was quadrangalar, with an image of Buddha in s polished niche on each face. The niche containing the Jain image on one side of the hexagonal portion of the Kahâoñ column of Gupta age may be compared (Cunningham, Reports, XVI, Pl. XXIX).
Cunningham (Reports I, 272 ) used Julien's translation of Higen Tsang, according to which the Asôka pillar at Kapitha=Sankasya (Beng-kia-she) was 70 feet high, made of a hard fine-grained reddish stone, and brilliantly polished. The later pilgrim agrees with the earlier in stating that the animal on the top was a lion. But the capital found by Cunningham at Sankisa in the Farrukhabad District, U. P., which he identified with Sankasys (Seng-kiashe) has on it an elephant, not a lion. The capital found undoubtedly belongs to an Aboka pillar, but Cunningham's theory (p. 278 ) that both the Chinese pilgrims mistook an elephant for a lion, seems to me, if I may express myself blantly, simply incredible. Cunningham afterwards found the brick base on which the pillar had stood Reports, XI, 22 ), but could not discover any trace of the shaft.
Watters (On Yuan Chwang, I, 334) translates Hinen Tsang (=Yuan Chwang,) as stating that at Kapitha (=Sankaya) there was an Asoka pillar of & lustrous violet colour and very hard, with a crouching lion on the top facing the stairs ; quaintly carved figures were on each side of the pillar, and according to one's bad or good deserts figures appeared to him in the pillar.' The lustrous violet colour' well describes the appearance of the polished grey Bandstone when mellowed by age. Asoka never used 'reddish' sandstone. The rod
