The Heliodorus pillar is a stone column that was erected around 113 BCE in central India in Besnagar (Vidisha), Madhya Pradesh. The pillar is commonly named after Heliodorus () (identified by him as a Garuda-standard), who was an ambassador of the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas from Taxila, and was sent to the Indian ruler Bhagabhadra. A dedication written in Brahmi script was inscribed on the pillar, venerating Vāsudeva (Krishna), the Deva deva the "God of Gods" and the Supreme Deity. The pillar also glorifies the Indian ruler as "Bhagabhadra the savior". The pillar is a stambha which symbolizes joining earth, space and heaven, and is thought to connote the "cosmic axis" and express the cosmic totality of the Deity.
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.
Location and surveys
Survey by Alexander Cunningham in 1874–1875
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The pillar was first discovered by Alexander Cunningham in 1877 near the ancient city of Besnagar in neighbourhood of Vidisha in central India. Besnagar was founded near the confluence of Betwa River and Halali River (formerly, Bais River and the basis for "Bes"-nagar). The fertile region was historically important because it was on the trade route between the northern Gangetic valley, the Deccan and the South Indian kingdoms of the subcontinent. The Besnagar site is at the northeastern periphery of the confluence, and close to Sanchi and Udayagiri, both ancient and of significance to Buddhism and Hinduism.
Cunningham, an avid British archaeologist credited with many discoveries of ancient sites on the subcontinent, saw no inscription due to the thick crust surrounding the pillar. He nevertheless sensed its historical significance from the shape and the visible features such as the crowning emblem, carved fan, rosettes, the faceted symmetry merging into a round section. He also guessed there may be an inscription below the crust, and reported the pillar as, "the most curious and novel" of all his discoveries. Near the standing Besnagar pillar, Cunningham found the remains of a fan-palm pinnacle, which he thought originally belonged to the pillar. Assuming that this broken part was part of the standing pillar, he sketched a composite version.
A short distance away, Cunningham found a second pillar capital on the ground with an emblem in the form of a makara (mythical elephant-crocodile-fish composite).
Later research showed that the fan palm pinnacle could not fit, and the discovery of the inscription on the pillar suggested that a Garuda emblem was crowning the structure.
Second survey in 1909–1910
Between 1909 and early 1910, nearly 30 years after the pillar's discovery, a small Indian and British archaeological team led by H H Lake revisited the site. After the thick red crust was cleaned out, they found Brahmi script inscriptions. John Marshall reported the discovered inscriptions, and to everyone's surprise, the longer inscription related to a Greek ambassador named Heliodorus of 2nd-century BCE and the deity Vāsudeva. An additional smaller inscription on the pillar listed human virtues, later identified to be from a verse of the Mahabharata.
Third survey in 1913–1915
The pillar and the unusual inscriptions attracted two larger archaeological excavations. The first was completed between 1913 and 1915, under D.R. Bhandarkar, but left incomplete because the priest blocked efforts citing rights to his home and compound walls his ancestors had built over the mound.
The Heliodorus pillar is neither tapered nor polished like the ancient Ashokan pillars found in India. This was destroyed by a flood around 200 BCE. New soil was then added and the ground level raised to build a new second temple to Vāsudeva, with a wooden pillar (Garuda dhvaja) in front of the east-facing elliptical shrine. This too was destroyed by floods sometime in the 2nd-century BCE. In late 2nd-century BCE, after some ground preparation, yet another Vāsudeva temple was rebuilt, this time with eight stone pillars aligned in the north-south cardinal axis. Only one of these eight pillars have survived: the Heliodorus pillar.
Inscriptions
thumb|upright|Main inscription of the Heliodorus pillar, .
There are two inscriptions on the pillar. The inscriptions have been analysed by several authors, such as E. J. Rapson, Sukthankar, and Shane Wallace.
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.
<poem>
Three immortal precepts (footsteps)... when practiced
lead to heaven: self-restraint, charity, consciousness</poem>
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thumb|300px|Heliodorus pillar rubbing (inverted colors). The text is in the [[Brahmi script of the Sunga period.
The Garuda capital of the Heliodorus pillar has not been found in the surveys, but it has been suggested that it had already been excavated by Cunningham, who was unaware of the Garuda attribution of the pillar, and that the remains of this Garuda capital were transferred to the Gwalior Museum together with the other artefacts initially discovered at the site. In particular, a statue fragment in the Gwalior Museum, composed of bird's feet holding a Naga, with the tail end resting on a portion of a vedika, may correspond to the lost Garuda capital of the Heliodorus pillar.
According to Susan L. Huntington, the Garuda capital on the Heliodorus pillar was probably similar to a portable Garuda standard illustrated on one of the nearly contemporary reliefs at Bharhut. The inscription in Brahmi script next to the relief of the Garuda pillar at Bharhut reads: