Pataliputra: The Mauryas and the Guptas

Pataliputra under the Mauryas

Around 321 BCE, Chandragupta Maurya, with the help of Kautilya (Chanakya), overthrew the last Nanda king and made Pataliputra the capital of an empire that came to stretch from Afghanistan to Karnataka.

Megasthenes, the ambassador of the Greek king Seleucus Nicator, lived at the Mauryan court. His Indica is lost, but later Greek writers quote it:

• Pataliputra stretched along the Ganga, near its meeting with the Son;
• it was surrounded by a wooden wall with 64 gates and 570 towers, and a wide moat;
• the city was run by a council of 30 members in six boards of five.

Excavations at Kumhrar (Patna) found the remains of an 80-pillared hall of polished sandstone. At Bulandibagh, parts of the wooden wall were found.

Ashoka's Bihar

Ashoka (about 268–232 BCE) turned to the Dhamma after the Kalinga war. His monuments in Bihar are:

• pillars at Lauriya Nandangarh (still with its lion capital), Lauriya Araraj and Rampurva (one with a bull capital, now in Rashtrapati Bhavan, and one with a lion capital), all in Champaran;
• the Barabar caves (Lomas Rishi, Sudama and others), cut into granite for the Ajivika monks, with mirror-polished inner walls; the nearby Nagarjuni caves were given by his grandson Dasharatha;
• the third Buddhist council at Pataliputra, under the monk Moggaliputta Tissa.

Mauryan art

Mauryan craftsmen gave sandstone a glass-like shine, called Mauryan polish. The best-known example is the Didarganj Yakshi, a life-size female figure holding a fly-whisk, found at Didarganj in Patna in 1917 and now in the Bihar Museum.

The Gupta age

After the Mauryas, Magadha was ruled by the Shungas and Kanvas. In the 4th century CE the Guptas rose here and again made Pataliputra a great capital.

• Chandragupta I married Kumaradevi, a Lichchhavi princess. Their portraits appear together on gold coins, which shows how much the alliance mattered.
• Samudragupta's conquests are recorded on the Allahabad pillar.
• The Chinese pilgrim Faxian visited Pataliputra under Chandragupta II and praised its hospitals and rest houses.
• Kumaragupta I founded Nalanda (next lesson).
• The mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata wrote the Aryabhatiya (499 CE) at Kusumapura, generally identified with Pataliputra.

Exam tip: Remember three numbers from Megasthenes (64 gates, 570 towers, 30-member city council) and three Ashokan pillar sites (Lauriya Nandangarh, Lauriya Araraj, Rampurva).