Girdharpurtila, Mathura: Capital of Indo-Persepolitan pillar, about 1st Century A.D. Mathura, Curzon Museum,

A number of foreign elements have been borrowed for this capital which in form does not look like any we have seen earlier in Indian art and is not a direct copy of Iranian examples either, The typical Iranian-Persepolitan capital had a protome of bulls, human-headed bulls, lions, occasional horses, and there is evidence that griffins were tried but then discarded, Floral motifs were used in magnificently abstract forms and, at some points, closely resembled lotus flowers: even the inverted variety of the imperial Asokan columns from the Maurya Period, Parts of these elements are found in [the] present example, which does not make use of any foreign motif exactly as it originally appeared: the lions are not adorned, but do appear, floral motifs are indeed abstract and fairly similar to Persepolitan types, but are not unknown in Indian architecture, The disc-like abacus on top of which a larger sculptural group probably would have appeared is already traditional in Indian architecture