Heritage · Niglihawa
Read Ashoka's words on the stone
A close look at the Niglihawa inscription with a guide and a printed transcription: the Brahmi letters, the name of Konakamana Buddha, the word 'thube' for stupa and the later line of King Ripu Malla.
![David Lowry [1] · CC BY 2.0](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nigali_Sagar_pillar_full_view.jpg){kind=link}
Brahmi, the script of Ashoka's inscriptions, is the ancestor of Devanagari and most other scripts of South and South-East Asia. At Niglihawa you can see it on the stone, and with a little help, start to read it.
Your guide brings a large printed transcription and works through it with you: the king's title Devanampiya Piyadasi, the regnal years 14 and 20, the name Konakamana and the word thube, the oldest written record of 'stupa'. Low sun picks out the cuts in the polished sandstone.
Then we look at the later layer: 'Om mani padme hum' and Ripu Malla's line from about 1312 CE, a medieval king leaving his name beside an emperor's. It takes 45 minutes and changes how you see every inscription afterwards.
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Questions
What does the Niglihawa inscription say?
In translation, it says that King Devanampiya Piyadasi, Ashoka, in the 14th year of his reign enlarged the stupa of Buddha Konakamana to double its size, and in the 20th year came himself to worship and had a stone pillar set up. Part of the text is lost where the pillar is broken.
Is the Niglihawa inscription genuine?
Yes, it is generally accepted as genuine. Doubts arose because Alois Führer, who studied it in 1895, was later exposed for forging other finds and inventing ruins around this pillar. But Vincent Smith, who exposed him, accepted the inscription, and Ashoka specialist Harry Falk considers such inscriptions beyond Führer's ability to fake.
What language is the Niglihawa inscription in?
It is written in the Brahmi script in a Prakrit language, the everyday Middle Indo-Aryan speech used in Ashoka's inscriptions across his empire. Brahmi was forgotten for centuries and deciphered in the 1830s by James Prinsep, which made reading these pillars possible.
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