Nigali Sagar

Discovery

The pillar was discovered in 1893 by a Nepalese officer on a hunting expedition. The pillar and its inscriptions (there are several inscriptions on it, from Brahmi to Medieval) were researched in March 1895 by Alois Anton Führer. Führer published his discovery in the Progress Report of the Archaeological Survey Circle, North-West Province, for the year ending on June 30, 1895.

The pillar was not erected in-situ, as no foundation has been discovered under it. It is thought that it was moved about 8 to 13 miles, from an uncertain location (possibly from Taulihawa or Gotihawa).

Besides his description of the pillar, Führer made a detailed description of the remains of a monumental "Konagamana stupa" near the Nigali Sagar pillar, which was later discovered to be an imaginative construct. Führer wrote that "On all sides around this interesting monument are ruined monasteries, fallen columns, and broken sculptures", when actually nothing can be found around the pillar. In the following years, inspections of the site showed that there were no such archaeological remains, and that, in respect to Fuhrer's description "every word of it is false". It was finally understood in 1901 that Führer had copied almost word-for-word this description from a report by Alexander Cunningham about the stupas in Sanchi.

Authenticity

The fact that the inscription was discovered by Führer, who is also known to have forged Brahmi inscriptions on ancient stone artefacts, was suggested by some scholars to cast a doubt on the authenticity of this inscription. However, historian Vincent Arthur Smith—who had exposed Führer's forgeries—never challenged the authenticity of the Lumbini pillar inscription and the Nigali Sagar inscription, only noting that the broken section of the Nigali Sagar had been moved at an unknown time from its original location, and did not have other ancient remains around it as Führer had claimed.

Harry Falk—a leading scholar of Ashoka's inscriptions—has stated that the authenticity of Ashoka's Lumbini inscription is "beyond dispute," and that "features of truly Aśokan script, some of them extinct at the middle of the second century BC" could not realistically have been forged by Führer who was "extremely clumsy", "ill-educated in Prakrit phonology and morphology", and "ignorant to the same degree of Brāhmī palaeography," therefore "disqualifying Führer as the author of a perfect fake."

Charles Allen has argued that the Nigali Sagar pillar is an authentic inscription of Ashoka that was originally located in Taulihawa a few kilometres away, where a 19th century Hindu temple was built around possibly the base of the pillar, worshipped as a Shiva linga. "After the upper part of the pillar had been pulled down or broken off," proposes Allen, this inscribed section was moved to the present location Nigali Sagar, "perhaps so that the upper section could be used as a roller for crushing sugar cane".