Meet Friedrich Oertel, The German-Born Engineer Who 'Found' India's State Emblem
As we know, India's national emblem is a symbol steeped in ancient history. It's one of the most visible symbols in India, as it ought to be for the Sarnath Lion Capital of Ashoka in the country's state emblem. Sadly forgotten today, the man who discovered it was no archaeologist. Catch the story of Friedrich Oscar Oertel and his fantastic finds at Sarnath, who have slipped between the pages of history.
While everyone knows that Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore penned the words of India's national anthem, very little is known about the creative brains behind other national symbols. In fact, there is a debate about who designed the flag, though it is widely believed that Pingali Venkayya was the one who created it.
Friedrich Oertel, The German-born engineer Who Who 'Found' India's State Emblem | AFP
Similarly, very few people know about the man who found and sketched India's national emblem, a legacy that unfortunately was forgotten within 75 years of independence.
What is our national emblem?
The National Emblem serves as the Republic's seal and is one of the most visible symbols of national identity.
By definition, an emblem is "a heraldic device or symbolic object as a distinctive badge of a nation, institution, or family." A seal that is only to be used for official purposes by the state is the national emblem of a nation. A nation's emblem serves as both a symbol of authority and the foundation of the country's constitutional philosophy.
Friedrich Oertel, The German-born engineer Who Who 'Found' India's State Emblem | Twitter
On January 26, 1950, it was adopted from the lion capital of one of the Ashoka Pillars. The motto "Satyamev Jayate," which means "truth always wins," was added to the emblem, taken from the Mundaka Upanishad.
The man who found India's state Emblem
As we know that India's national emblem is a symbol steeped in ancient history. It's one of the most visible symbols in India, as it ought to be for the Sarnath Lion Capital of Ashoka in the country's state emblem. Sadly forgotten today, the man who discovered it was no archaeologist.
Catch the story of Friedrich Oscar Oertel and his fantastic finds at Sarnath, who have slipped between the pages of history.
Who was Friedrich Oscar Oertel?
Friedrich Oertel, The German-born engineer Who Who 'Found' India's State Emblem | Wikipedia
Born on December 9, 1862, in Hannover, Germany, Oertel left for British-ruled India at an early age. Despite his unfortunate anonymity today, Friedrich Oscar Oertel was an interesting man and a talented civil engineer in his time.
Friedrich Oscar Oertel left Germany for India, where he studied at the Thomason College of Civil Engineering (now known as IIT-Roorkee). Oertel was first employed as an engineer for railway and building construction by the Indian Public Board from 1883 to 1887. After that, he returned to England, where he studied architecture under Richard Phene Spiers.
Started his career in the Public Works Department
Oertel started his career in the Public Works Department, and he was sent on diverse missions where he surveyed the monuments and archaeological sites in North and Central India before reaching Rangoon in British Burma in March 1892. He was sent to Sri Lanka by the Royal Asiatic Society to visit the Abhayagiri dagoba and make suggestions on the best way to preserve or restore it in 1900.
Friedrich Oertel, The German-born engineer Who Who 'Found' India's State Emblem | Twitter
As Executive Engineer in the "Buildings and Roads" branch of the Public Works Department, he was posted in various places in Uttar Pradesh from 1903 to 1907. Throughout this period, he was also involved in supervising or participating in the construction of numerous buildings in Uttar Pradesh (Allahabad (Prayagraj), Agra, Lucknow, and Cawnpore (Kanpur)).
This firsthand experience helped him to formulate his opinion concerning the construction of the new capital at New Delhi, which he made public with a lecture delivered before the East India Association at Caxton Hall, Westminster, on July 21, 1913. There, he strongly advocated that the architects of New Delhi should be inspired by a "really national Indian style."
Contribution to Indian art and archaeology
Besides his research on the monuments of Burma (now known as Myanmar) that was published in 1893, Oertel is best known for the excavation of Sarnath done from December 1904 up to April 1905.
Friedrich Oertel, The German-born engineer Who Who 'Found' India's State Emblem | File Photo
If you were an archaeologist planning a dig at this famed Buddhist holy site, you would prefer working in the relatively dry winter and spring instead of the hot summer and wet monsoon. Accordingly, Friedrich Oscar Oertel, a civil engineer from the Public Works Department, arrived in Sarnath in December 1904. He was an amateur archaeologist and had been looking forward to the dig that he had planned with the Archaeology Survey of India. He had four months before the summer heat made it impossible to work, and there was no way he could know what was waiting for him under the mud.
Oertel was in Sarnath for just one season, from December 1904 to April 1905, but it was a magical dig. Here is a picture of the dig during that time.
On #InternationalMuseumDay, a glimpse of the oldest site Museum - Sarnath Museum.
¡ª Archaeological Survey of India (@ASIGoI) May 18, 2020
From the archives - The Lion Capital along with other Archaeological remains being excavated in 1904-05 by Friedrich Oscar Oertel at Sarnath. pic.twitter.com/WnL5DI05qr
Friedrich Oertel discovered one of Ashoka's pillars, which was among the best preserved, during the Sarnath dig. It was nearly 7 feet tall, with four lions sitting with their backs to each other and their mouths open. They sat on a base that had a frieze of sculptures of a lion, elephant, bull, and horse, each separated by wheels, or chakras. This abacus, in turn, was atop an inverted lotus. It was all made of polished sandstone. The discovery sent waves through the small but passionate community of archaeologists around the world.
Oertel apparently returned to the United Kingdom in 1921, having retired from the Public Works Department. Until around 1928, he lived in Teddington, naming his house "Sarnath," and gave lectures on India. Oertel donated numerous artefacts to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, which he had collected during his work career in India.
From a Museum in Sarnath to India's State Emblem
A little over four decades later, India was getting ready for her independence. Among the many responsibilities of drafting a constitution, the Constituent Assembly decided that Ashoka's Lion Capital should be India's state emblem. During Ashoka's time, the four lions with their open mouths were spreading Buddha's message in the four cardinal directions.
Man who designed the Indian Emblem
Man who designed Indian Emblem | Dinanath Bhargava | TOI
After Independence, India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had given the task of designing the Constitution's original manuscript to Ravindranath Tagore, Shantiniketan's Kala Bhavan principal, and noted painter Nandalal Bose. But Bose had handed over the task to Dinanath Bhargava, who was just 21 years old at the time and studying arts in Shantiniketan.
A replica of the original artwork of Ashok Stambh designed by Bhargava is still in their possession, as he completed it many years later, in around 1985.
The artwork designed by Bhargava using gold leaf shows the mouths of the three lions opening a little, and their teeth are also visible in it. At the bottom, "Satyamev Jayate" is also written in golden colour.
For more trending stories, follow us on Telegram.
Anuj Tiwari writes stories for SEO and is a Youtube wizard. An engineer turned social media champ, he keeps a track of all that goes around the world. His interest areas include historic events, political and social-sciences.