11. Padre Marco della Tomba and the Asoka pillars 
near Bettiah. 
By Rev. H. Hosen, 8.J. 
rts. 
writings of Padre Marco della * omba, a Capuchin Missionary 
long resident in Bettiah.' He arrived in India in 1758, and 
was posted the same year to Bettiah where he resided with 
little interruption between 1758 and 1769. 
In his frequent journeys to and fro between Bettiah and 
Patna he had to pass near the lion-capped pillar of Bakhra and 
the pillar of Lauriya-Araraj, while his attempted journey to 
Khatmandu (1762), where there was a Capuchin Mission, 
brought him near the lion-crowned pillar of Lauriya-Navand- 
garh, and possibly near the two pillars at Rampurva. 
Padre Marco writes in his Descrizione dell’ India Orientale, 
pp. 39— 40 :— 
‘¢ Though many of our historians deny it, it is quite true 
that Alexander the Great conquered the same Indostan in the 
year 3675. Leaving alone the reasons which other historians 
city of Bettia, and fashioned apparently by the same artist. 
Not counting their length under the ground, they stand 27 
cubits high up to the capital, on the top of there is a 
lion, which looks very natural. The circumference of the 
column is 7 cubits, as I myself measured umn seems 
but not one of them 
1 Gli seritti del Padre Marco della Tomba..raccolti, ordinati ed 
L i Angelo de Gubernatis.. .. Firenze, 1878. —This work 
8 Probably some of the Capuchin Fathers conversant with Tibe- 
tan, for the Capuchin Mission in Tibet had come to an end in 1745. 
