Pataliputra: Capital of Magadha, the Mauryas and the Guptas

Pataliputra was the capital of the kingdom of Magadha and of the Maurya Empire, standing where the Son river met the Ganges on the site of modern Patna in Bihar. Founded as a fort around 490 BC, it grew into one of the largest cities of the ancient world, admired by the Greek envoy Megasthenes for its vast timber walls. For almost a thousand years it was the political heart of northern India, home to the Nandas, the Mauryas and, for a time, the Guptas.

Founding on the Ganges

In the 5th century BC, Magadha was one of several rival states in the Ganges plain, with its capital at Rajagriha (modern Rajgir), surrounded by hills. According to Buddhist texts, King Ajatashatru, whose reign is traditionally dated to around 492–460 BC, built a fortress at the village of Pataligrama to guard the river crossing during his wars with the Vajji confederacy to the north.

The Mahaparinibbana Sutta, a Buddhist account of the Buddha’s last journey, describes the fort being built and has the Buddha predict that it will become a great city. Tradition then credits Ajatashatru’s successor Udayin with moving the royal capital there. The site had clear advantages: it lay at the junction of major rivers, ideal for trade and for moving troops by boat.

The name is usually explained as combining patali, the trumpet-flower tree, with putra, “son”. The city was also known as Kusumapura, “city of flowers”, and Greek writers called it Palibothra.

The precise founding date is not known. The year of about 490 BC follows the traditional chronology of Magadha’s kings, which is itself uncertain by several decades.

Capital of empires

Pataliputra rose with Magadha. The Nanda kings of the 4th century BC ruled a large realm from it, and around 322 BC Chandragupta Maurya seized the city and made it the capital of the first empire to cover most of the Indian subcontinent.

Under his grandson Ashoka in the 3rd century BC, the city was the seat of an administration that reached from Afghanistan to Bengal. Buddhist tradition places the Third Buddhist Council at Pataliputra around 250 BC, under Ashoka’s patronage.

After the Maurya dynasty fell to Pushyamitra Shunga around 185 BC, the Shungas ruled from the city. Several centuries later, the Gupta kings of the 4th century AD again made Pataliputra a royal centre, and Samudragupta’s inscriptions show its importance in his reign. The Chinese pilgrim Faxian, who stayed there in the early 5th century AD, admired its hospitals and Buddhist monasteries and thought the old palace of Ashoka too magnificent to have been built by human hands.

Megasthenes’ description

The most famous account of the city comes from Megasthenes, the ambassador of the Macedonian king Seleucus I at Chandragupta’s court around 300 BC. His book, the Indica, is lost, but later writers such as Arrian and Strabo quoted it.

Megasthenes, as reported by Arrian, said that Pataliputra was shaped like a parallelogram, 80 stadia long and 15 stadia wide, roughly 14.5 km by 2.7 km. It was enclosed by a wooden wall pierced with loopholes for archers, with 570 towers and 64 gates. In front of the wall ran a defensive ditch, said to be 600 feet wide and 30 cubits deep, which also served as a drain for the city’s waste.

He also described the city’s government. According to Strabo’s summary, Pataliputra was run by six boards of five officials each, responsible for crafts, foreigners, registration of births and deaths, trade, manufactures and the collection of a tax on sales. Historians treat these details with some caution, but many fit what is known from Indian sources. More on his account appears in Megasthenes and the Indica.

Pataliputra in Indian sources

Indian texts confirm the city’s fame. The grammarian Patanjali, usually dated to the 2nd century BC, uses Pataliputra in his grammatical examples as a well-known city lying along the Son river. Buddhist and Jain traditions set many stories of kings, ministers and monks there, and Jain tradition places an early council of its monks in the city.

The city also appears at moments of crisis. The Yuga Purana, an astrological text, describes Yavanas, the Indian name for Greeks, reaching Kusumadhvaja, another name for Pataliputra, and then withdrawing because of a war among themselves. Many historians link this passage to raids by the Indo-Greek kings of the north-west in the 2nd century BC, although its date and meaning are debated.

In the 1st century BC, the Hathigumpha inscription of King Kharavela of Kalinga boasts that he threatened the king of Magadha. Such claims show that Pataliputra remained a prize worth fighting for long after the Mauryas had gone.

Excavations at Patna

Because modern Patna covers the ancient city, excavation has been piecemeal. In the 1890s the British surgeon and scholar L. A. Waddell identified the site, and digging in the following years recorded finds, including timber remains and a stone capital now known as the Pataliputra capital.

From 1912, David Brainard Spooner of the Archaeological Survey of India excavated at Kumhrar. He found the remains of a large pillared hall with rows of polished sandstone columns, often called the eighty-pillared hall, set on wooden platforms, and dated it to the Maurya period. Later excavations at Kumhrar in 1951–55 confirmed and refined his results. The excavators found that the pillars had been set on massive timber bases and that the hall may have been destroyed by fire, leaving a layer of ash over the remains.

At Bulandi Bagh, excavations in the 1920s revealed long lines of heavy wooden posts forming a palisade, with timber drains, matching Megasthenes’ description of a wooden wall. Finds from Pataliputra, including the polished stone statue known as the Didarganj Yakshi, are now displayed in the Patna and Bihar museums, although the dating of some pieces is debated.

Decline and later history

After the Gupta period Pataliputra declined, perhaps as a result of floods, shifting rivers, invasions and the movement of political power to other centres such as Kannauj. When the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang visited in the 7th century, he found the old city mostly in ruins, with only a small settlement remaining.

In 1541 the Afghan ruler Sher Shah Suri built a fort on the site, and the city of Patna grew around it. Under the Mughals and the British it became a major trading city again, and today it is the capital of Bihar.

Timeline

• c. 490 BC: Ajatashatru of Magadha builds a fort at Pataligrama on the Ganges.
• 5th century BC: Udayin traditionally moves the capital of Magadha to Pataliputra.
• c. 322 BC: Chandragupta Maurya takes Pataliputra from the Nandas.
• c. 300 BC: Megasthenes visits and describes the city.
• c. 250 BC: Third Buddhist Council held under Ashoka, according to tradition.
• c. 185 BC: Pushyamitra Shunga overthrows the last Maurya king.
• Early 5th century AD: The Chinese pilgrim Faxian stays in the city.
• 1912–1913: Spooner begins excavating the Maurya pillared hall at Kumhrar.

Why it matters

Pataliputra was the first great imperial capital of India and one of the largest cities on earth in the 3rd century BC. Its history links the rise of Magadha, the Maurya Empire and the Guptas, and its timber walls and pillared hall give rare physical evidence for the world described by ancient Greek and Indian writers.