Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c9.3

c9.3

A STRONG firm government administered over a large territory usually implies an advance in human endeavour, and with the rise of the Mauryan dynasty towards the end of the fifth century B.C. which established for the first time a single paramount power in northern India, marked cultural progress was made. Among other achievements the art of building, stimulated by royal patronage, took a notable step forward, as Megasthenes' account¹ of the Mauryan capital of Pataliputra (near Patna) plainly shows. This Greek ambassador who resided at the court of the emperor Chandragupta about 300 B.C., presents us with a striking picture of the great Indian ruler's stronghold. Occupying a narrow parallelogram about nine miles long and a mile and a half broad, it ranged along the banks of the Ganges like an immense castellated breakwater, surrounded by a stupendous timber palisade, with loopholes for archers and protected externally by a wide and deep moat. At intervals were bastions with towers, over five hundred in number, and it was entered by as many as sixty-four gates. Within the walls was the royal palace, evidently a much more spacious and elaborate edifice than that erected by any previous ruler in the country. The main portion of this imperial residence consisted of a series of hypostyle halls containing pillars of wood each of which "was clasped around with vines embossed in gold and ornamented with designs of birds and foliage in gold and silver, thus excelling in magnificence the famous royal plaisances of Susa and Echatana." Apart from the picture of barbaric splendor that such a description conveys, in this city with its unending wooden walls and beetling bastions, and in the centre the palace formed of golden pillared halls, there are indications that India as represented by the Mauryan dynasty was beginning to look even at this early date to the more progressive civilizations beyond its western boundaries for architectural inspiration. For the hypostyle hall had long been a feature of the palaces of the Persians, and Polybius (x. 24) remarks that the columns at the courts of Echatana were of cedar and cypress, "all covered with silver plate," a form of structure and decorative treatment not unlike that which Chandragupta appears to have reproduced in his palatial residence at Pataliputra.