Late Middle Ages · South Asia · Culture

1360

Firuz Shah Tughlaq restores the Ashoka Pillars

1360

The Delhi sultan transported two ancient Mauryan pillars - their Brahmi inscriptions still undeciphered - from Topra and Meerut to his capital, raising them as monuments in his palace gardens. It was a remarkable act of archaeological preservation: a Muslim ruler honoring pre-Islamic Indian heritage fifteen hundred years after Ashoka carved the edicts.