Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c10.249

c10.249

Fīrūz Shāh was perhaps the first Sulṭān who took care to preserve those archaeological remains in the country that struck him as curious and worthy of his attention. The careful and expensive way in which the two Asoka columns, one in the village of Topra in the district Khiẓrābād in the hills, and the other in the vicinity of the town of Meerut, were brought to his capital, shows a taste for archaeology in the Sulṭān and a respect for Hindu monuments which were rare in those days. *It was supposed* that these columns had stood there from the time of the Pāṇḍavas, and the historian 'Afīf was inclined to take them as the walking-sticks of the giant-like Bhīma of the *Mahābhārata*. One of the columns was erected in the palace at Fīrūzābād near the Jami' Masjid and called the Golden Column,¹ while the other was placed in the Hunting Palace,² with great labour and skill.³