The reason of this location of the pillar is due to its prominent location on the road to Nepal from the ancient Magadhan capital of Pataliputra. Even today one can surely feel the importance of this pillar in the ancient times.



There are several mounds near the pillar which go on almost in a straight line for quite some distance. I once wondered whether they had been ever excavated, but later found that most of them had been excavated in the nineteenth century and did yield some relics of those centuries B.C. I also visited Nandangarh which is located very close by, which by name seemed to indicate some fabled town of the like that one reads in story-books. A large Stupa existed there in the ancient times, the ruins of which are themselves indicative of the prominence of the site in the ancient times. The Ashokan Pillar also bears the imprints of the successive generations who have tried to engrave the facets of their existence for immortality.

The Lion pillar of Lauriya Nandangarh was so first named by Alexander Cunningham (in 1860-61), as against Mathiah Pillar as it was called earlier after being such named by Mr. Hodgson, after a village nearby. The ruins seem to have been first noticed by Hodgson in 1835. Then Cunnigham described it in his report of 1861-62. The ruins were latter further explored and excavated by his two assistants – Carlleyle and Garrick. On Cunningham’s recommendations, some excavation was made in one of the “burial” mounds, a brief notice of which appeared in the Bengal Administration report of 1868-69. In 1904-05, Bloch partially excavated some of these burial mounds which were later excavated further by N G Mazumdar in 1935-37. Bloch also commenced excavation of the great mound of Nandangarh, which was further continued in the years 1938 to 1940 by A Ghosh, revealing the remains of an unusually large stupa.

To be continued