The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c29.26

v1.c29.26

Açoka's activity in this latter respect is not proportionally evidenced by existing monuments. When the Chinese pilgrims refer, as they constantly do, to a '*stūpa* of Açoka,' we cannot in strictness understand anything more than one of archaic style, such as are those still more or less intact at Sānchī or Bhārhut or figured on their sculptures and elsewhere, nor are we allowed to ascribe *en bloc* to the emperor himself the pillars at Delhi, Allahābād, Sārnāth, Rāmpūrvā and in other places, on which his edicts are found inscribed: he himself forbids this, when he orders his edicts to be engraven on pillars, where such should be found¹. The only works of this nature particularised by him in the edicts relating to the places in question are the double enlargement of the *stūpa* of Koṇagamana at Niglīva, the pillar erected at the same place and that at the Lumbinī garden: the cave-dwellings assigned to the Ājīvika monks in the Barābar hills are not expressly stated to have been constructed by Açoka's orders. When we have added the stone railing round the Bodhi-tree, which seems to be figured on the *stūpa* of Sānchī (*v. sup.* p. 500), we have completed the list of what can certainly be ascribed to him. But, no doubt, the remains of the palace, the Açokārāma, the Kukkuṭārāma, and other erections at Pāṭaliputra may be plausibly claimed for him²; and we may also mention the completion on his behalf, by the Yavana king Tushāspha, of the Sudarçana tank in Junāgarh, which had been begun by his grandfather Chandragupta³. For the rest we must be content to believe that the great reputation which he enjoyed in this respect had a solid foundation.