Of all the remains at Vaishali, the most remarkable is the Mauryan Pillar. The village of Kolhua is situated about 2 to 3 miles north west of Basarh, with which the ancient ruins of Vaishali were earlier associated. As stated by Princep, as early as January, 1784, Mr. Law had presented to the Asiatic Society of Bengal “a short account of Two Pillars to the north of Patna.” The account was of a cursory nature and was therefore not published. It is not known whether he then referred to the pillar at Kolhua, then known as Bakhra Pillar from another village of the same name nearby.

Some drawings or paintings of the pillar were also made in 1814 by an Indian artist for J.R. Elphinstone; but the first descriptive account on the pillar and the ruins was published in 1835 by Stephenson and Princep accompanied by drawings from Hodgson. This appeared in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.

In a note along with the drawings Hodgson remarked “I have at last the pleasure to send you my drawings of the Bakhra coloumn, and the Radhia coloumn, with their iinscriptions, and a third of the Kesariyah mound, surmounted with its hemispherical temple or Dehgope (stupa). I trust you will animadvert severely upon the barbarous custom of cutting ciphers and names upon these ancient monuments – if there were any inscriptions on the Bakhra column, it must in this way have been scribbled over and destroyed.”  Princep mentions that the name of CH Barlow in 1780 and General Brisco and others in 1799 were found scribbled on the ancient Bakhra Pillar.  

Later in 1861 and 1880, Cunningham explored and described the ruins more fully and most of the subsequent accounts on the place, are based mainly on what he had stated earlier.

To be continued...