less in Indian art. The "Persepolitan bell-shaped" capital survived, because it was not in Asoka's time a foreign importation, but an ancient Vedic symbol which had an established place in the ritual of Buddhism. The Manāsāra Silpa-Sāstra, quoted by Rām Rāz in his Essay on the Architecture of the Hindus, shows that the form of the Hindu temple pillar had a ritualistic significance, just as was the case with the different shapes of altars in Vedic ritual. Thus a pillar with square shaft signified Brahmā-worship, an octagonal one Vishnu-worship, a sixteen-sided one Rudra- or Siva-worship; while the cylindrical pillar without capital or base belonged to Chandra-worship.
These different varieties of pillar shafts, with or without the lotus-and-vase embellishment, are to be found in the ruined temples on the Sānchī hill. Possibly, as suggested above, the plain cylindrical shafts of the Asokan pillars may be a reminiscence of the ancient Chandra-worship with which the stūpa was connected. According to Hieun Tsang, the Chinese pilgrim who visited India in the seventh century a.d., India was known as the Land of the Moon. The holy ground at Benares, contained by the river front and the Panch Kōsi Road, is crescent-shaped. The most sacred places both of Buddhist and Hindu India are those where a mountain torrent pours over a scarp of rock curved like the crescent moon on Siva's brow, reminding the pious pilgrim of the holy Ganges as she descends into the plains of India at Hardwar over Himālayan wooded precipices—the tangled locks of the Great Yogi of Kailāsa, who represents the Brahman ideal of the Enlightened One.
