page_title: Heliodorus pillar
section_title: Inscriptions
hierarchical_section_title: Heliodorus pillar / Pillar / Inscriptions
caption_attribution_description: English: Heliodorus pillar Rapson rubbing inverted
context_page_description: The Heliodorus pillar is a stone column that was erected around 113 BCE in central India in Besnagar. The pillar is named after Heliodorus, an ambassador of the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas from Taxila, who made a dedication inscribed in Brahmi script on the pillar, declaring himself to be a devotee of Vāsudeva, the Deva deva or "God of Gods", the Supreme Deity. The Heliodorus pillar, joining earth, space and heaven, is thought to symbolize the "cosmic axis" and express the cosmic totality of the Deity.
  The Heliodorus pillar site is located near the confluence of two rivers, about 60 kilometres northeast from Bhopal, 11 kilometres from the Buddhist stupa of Sanchi, and 4 kilometres from the Hindu Udayagiri site.
  The pillar was discovered by Alexander Cunningham in 1877. Two major archaeological excavations in the 20th-century have revealed the pillar to be a part of an ancient Vāsudeva temple site. The temple and the inscriptions are among the earliest known evidence of Vāsudeva-Krishna devotion and early Vaishnavism in India, and one of the earliest surviving records of a western convert to Vaishnavism.
context_section_description: There are two inscriptions on the pillar. The inscriptions have been analysed by several authors, such as E. J. Rapson, Sukthankar, Richard Salomon, and Shane Wallace.
  The text of the inscriptions is in the Brahmi script of the Sunga period, the language is Central-western epigraphic Prakrit, with a few Sanskritized spellings. The first inscription describes the private religious dedication of Heliodorus (Translations: Richard Salomon):
  Line 1. This Garuda-standard of Vāsudeva, the god of gods
  
  Line 2. was constructed here by Heliodora (Heliodoros), the Bhagavata,
  
  Line 3. son of Dion, a man of Takhkhasila (Taxila),
  
  Line 4. the Greek ambassador who came from the Great King
  
  Line 5. Amtalikita (Antialkidas) to King
  
  Line 6. Kasiputra Bhagabhadra, the Savior,
  
  Line 7. prospering in (his) fourteenth regnal year.
  The second inscription on the pillar, in the same script, recites a verse from the Hindu epic Mahabharata:
  Line 1. (These?) three steps to immortality, when correctly followed,
  
  Line 2. lead to heaven: control, generosity, and attention.
  The identity of the King Bhagabhadra in the longer inscription is contested. Early scholars proposed that he may have been the 5th ruler of the Sunga dynasty, as described in some Puranic lists. However, later excavations by German archaeologists near Mathura (Sonkh) has shown that the Sunga dynasty ended before the Heliodorus pillar was installed. Therefore, it is probable that the Bhagabhadra may have been a local ruler. The virtues in the shorter inscription has been variously translated by different scholars. John Irwin, for example, translates it as "Restraint, Renunciation and Rectitude".
caption: Heliodorus pillar rubbing (inverted colors). The text is in the Brahmi script of the Sunga period.[4] For a recent photograph.
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