The side of the abacus is adorned with wheels in relief, and interspersing them, four animals, a lion, an elephant, a bull, and a galloping horse follow each other from right to left.

A bell-shaped lotus forms the lowest member of the capital, and the whole 2.1 metres (7 ft) tall, carved out of a single block of sandstone and highly polished, was secured to its monolithic column by a metal dowel.

The lion capital is among the first group of significant stone sculptures to have appeared in South Asia after the end of the Indus Valley Civilisation 1,600 years earlier.

Their sudden appearance, as well as similarities to Persepolitan columns of Iran before the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BCE, have led some to conjecture an eastward migration of Iranian stonemasons among whom the tradition of naturalistic carving had been preserved during the intervening decades.

Others have countered that a tradition of erecting columns in wood and copper had a history in India and the transition to stone was but a small step in an empire and period in which ideas and technologies were in a state of flux.

[2] He soon abandoned the effort, but not before noting that votive models of the stupa were scattered in the vicinity, lending credence to the view that the Dhamekh marked the spot at which the Buddha had preached his first sermon.

[3][4] In his account, Xuanzang mentioned a tall stupa to the northeast of Varanasi off the right bank of the Varuna river and a pillar nearby erected by Ashoka that was, "glistening and smooth as ice."

"[5] In the view of historian Frederick Asher, Xuanzang's account sometimes employed monuments as symbolic devices to fix miracles in a place.

Faxian had also mentioned some towers, one at the site where the Buddha met the five disciples and another "60 paces north" where he gave the first sermon, the account being more about relating the traditional stories than giving particulars of geography.

[6] Giving more literal credence to the accounts of Faxian and Xuanzang, the museum curator Sushma Jansari suggests that they could imply the existence of a greater number of Ashokan pillars during early historic[a] South Asia and its immediate aftermath than had remained at the time of the 18th- and 19th-century British investigations.

[9] "In the historiography of India," according to archaeologist Lars Fogelin, "the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries are often depicted as a period when Islam was forcibly imposed on the native Hindu population.

according to Fogelin, "However, by the thirteenth century CE, Buddhist monasteries in the Gangetic Plain and northeastern India were prominently supported by local and regional kings, and their relations with the non-elite laity consisted of little more than serving as landlords.

"[13] Echoing the same theme, art historian Frederick Asher says, "Muhammad of Ghor, who did conquer Benares in 1193–94 ... might have plundered Sarnath, more likely for whatever wealth was imagined to be stored there ... than for the sake of iconoclastic destruction.

[37] According to art historian Gail Maxwell, the sandstone received its shine through the application of heat which gives a lasting glass-like finish to the stone.

[44] Some scholars believe that lions were introduced into India from western Asia as a quarry for royal hunts, implying that they became a feral population thereafter and eventually became wild.

[44][d] This is suggested to have resulted from the contact of the South Asian dynasties with the Achaemenid and Seleucid empires when hunting lions became a sign of royal prowess.

[45] The three other animals on the rim of the abacus have been associated with events in the life of Prince Siddhartha: the elephant with his mother Queen Maya's dream about his birth; the horse with Kanthaka, the mount of his departure from the palace in the dead of night, and the bull with his first meditation under the rose apple tree (jambu, syzygium aqueum).

After surfacing and splitting into four streams it emanated from the mouths of the same four animals sitting on the lake's shore and flowed onto the four corners of the earth, like the message of the Buddha or of Ashoka himself.

"[48] In other interpretations, the four small animals shown on the side of the abacus have been thought to represent the cardinal directions: the lion (north), elephant (west), bull (south), and horse (east),[49] and the smaller wheels for the solstices and the equinoxes.

"[33] In the Aṅguttara Nikāya, the Buddha compared himself to the Indian lotus, a flower that rises clean and pure from muddy pond water, as he rose above an impure world to achieve awakening.

[50] According to art historian Gail Maxwell, The lions are fashioned so as to affect the viewer by the use of shape, colour, and texture, not necessarily to represent reality, suggestive of the addorsed capitals of the Achaemenid Empire.

[48][51] Others have thought them to have been nonsectarian symbols, promoting an ethical notion of rulership, or chakravartin (literally wheel turner) which Ashoka might have been aspiring to present himself,[48] to align himself with the prestige and universality of the Buddha.

"[55] Guha adds, "The historian and superintendent of the Museums Branch of the Archaeological Survey of India (1946–51), V. S. Agrawala, who was in charge of making the plaster cast in 1946, followed him in extending its meaning as the chakra dhvaja or 'the wheel flag.'

"[58] According to Irwin, "V. S. Agrawala followed Coomaraswamy in refusing to accept the 'Asokan bell' as anything but Indian, but he presented his case as an article of faith, making no attempt to prove it.

"[60] The realism of the lions, the straining tendons of their paws, and the "flesh around the jaws" have led others to ask about the provenance of some of the art commonly ascribed to the Maurya period.

[62] In 1973, John Irwin challenged the assertions of foreign influence by advancing three hypotheses: (a) Not all pillars were made for Ashoka; some had been adapted for his use; (b) whereas the four lions did seem to have Persian influence, the spiritedness of bull and the elephant betray an intimate familiarity with animals whose habitat did not extend to Iran; and (c) Ashoka had channelled a preexisting industry and culture devoted to treating a pillar as a symbol for axis mundi, the axis around which the earth revolves.

[68] Harry Falk, while categorically stating a Mauryan debt to "the stonework inherited from Achaemenid Iran," of the appearance during the Mauryan period of artwork that contrasted remarkably with local styles, and stating the likelihood of traditions of producing "naturalistic forms" being preserved in Iranian stonemasons for the critical decades between the fall of Persepolis and the appearance of Mauryan columns, emphasises the entrepreneurial spirit of Ashoka who, "did not shrink from doing what only the most illustrious rulers outside India had done before him: he had pillars produced of unbelievable dimensions, cut in one piece and transported to predefined places—pillars crowned with lions and bulls of an unprecedented naturalistic beauty.

But this should not be seen in colonialist terms as an export from an Achaemenian or Hellenistic centre to the South Asian periphery but as the result of Ashoka's entrepreneurial engagement with the larger world.

Sir John Marshall, after drawing attention to such foreign motifs at Sanchi as the ‘Assyrian tree of life, the West Asiatic winged beasts, and grapes, went on to remark that ‘nothing in these carvings is really mimetic, nothing certainly which degrades their art to the rank of a servile school’.

[53] The full pillar is generally reconstructed straightforwardly from its archaeological remains, with the tall column supporting the capital, and the larger wheel on top.