Place · Ashokan pillar · Nepal
Nigālī Sāgar pillar
The Ashokan pillar at Niglihawa, Nepal, 7 kilometres northwest of Lumbini, with Ashoka's inscription of 249 BCE recording his enlargement of the stupa of the previous Buddha Kanakamuni — evidence that the Buddhist sacred sites were already old enough by the Mauryan period to have been attributed to pre-Shakyamuni Buddhas, and that Ashoka was consciously extending patronage back through the deeper Buddhist cosmology. The pillar now lies broken on the ground, and the stupa mound beside it is a low grassy heap. The inscription parallels the Lumbini pillar inscription of the same year, both commemorating Ashoka's pilgrimage visit to the Buddha's natal region.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Ashokan edicts (Brahmi, Kharosthi, Greek, Aramaic)
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 27.560, 83.150
Connections (1)
- Companion in the same setLumbinī
Nigālī Sāgar and Lumbinī are about twenty kilometres apart in the Nepal Tarai, and their pillars were cut a few years apart. The Nigālī Sāgar text records Ashoka doubling the stupa of Konākamana, a Buddha of a previous age — evidence that a cult of earlier Buddhas already had monuments before his reign.
On these journeys
Sources
Minor Pillar Edicts — Nigali Sagar
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