It is not clear whether we ought to claim a wooden origin for these, as we can for all the other objects of Buddhist architecture. Certain it is, however, that the lâts of Asoka, with shafts averaging twelve diameters in height, are much more like wooden posts than any forms derived from stone architecture, and in an age when wooden pillars were certainly employed to support the roofs of halls, it is much more likely that the same material should be employed for the purposes to which these stambhas were applied, than the more intractable material of stone. The oldest authentic examples of these lâts that we are acquainted with, are those which King Asoka set up in the twenty-seventh year after his consecration--the thirty-first of his reign--to bear inscriptions conveying to his subjects the leading doctrines of the new faith he had adopted. The rock-cut edicts of the same king are dated in his twelfth year, and convey in a less condensed form the same information--Buddhism without Buddha--but inculcating respect to parents and priests, kindness and charity to all men, and, above all, tenderness towards animals.[49] The best known of these lâts is that set up by Feroze Shah, in his Kotila at Delhi, without, however, his being in the least aware of the original purpose for which it was erected, or the contents of the inscription. A fragment of a second was recently found lying on [Illustration: 3. Lât at Allahabad.] the ground near Hindu Rao’s house, north of Delhi.[50] Two others exist in Tirhoot at Radhia, and Mattiah, and a fragment of another was recognised utilised as a roller for the station roads, by an utilitarian member of the Bengal Civil Service. The most complete, however, is that which, in 1837, was found lying on the ground in the fort at Allahabad, and then re-erected with a pedestal, from a design by Captain Smith.[51] This pillar is more than usually interesting, as in addition to the Asoka inscriptions it contains one by Samudra Gupta (A.D. 380 to 400), detailing the glories of his reign, and the great deeds of his ancestors.[52] It seems again to have been thrown down, and was re-erected, as a Persian inscription tells us, by Jehangir (A.D. 1605), to commemorate his accession. It is represented without the pedestal (Woodcut No. 3). The shaft, it will be observed, is more than 3 ft. wide at the base, diminishing to 2 ft. 2 in. at the summit, which in a length of 33 ft.[53] looks more like the tapering of the stem of a tree--a deodar pine, for instance--than anything designed in stone. Like all the others of this class, this lât has lost its crowning ornament, which probably was a Buddhist emblem--a wheel or the trisul ornament[54]--but the necking still remains (Woodcut No. 4), and is almost a literal [Illustration: 4. Assyrian honeysuckle ornament from capital of Lât, at Allahabad.]