Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c9.5

c9.5

Of the fortifications surrounding this great capital city of the Mauryan empire nothing has survived except fragments of the wooden ramparts unearthed at Bulandi Bagh, near Patna, the beams of which by their size prove that the Greek envoy's account of its dimensions was by no means exaggerated. An idea may be gained from the foundations which consisted of timbers laid in parallel lines like railway sleepers each twelve to thirteen feet long, corresponding to the thickness of the stockade at its base. To these horizontal beams upright posts were tenoned, some of them nine feet high, but it is not possible from such scanty remains to estimate its total height. That this technical method of timbering was common to other races, widely separated and acting independently, is shown by the same principle being utilized by the Romans, as a scene on Trajan's Column depicts, while Caesar's description in his "Commentaries" of the wooden walls of the Celts might apply to those at Pataliputra. "They employ pieces of wood perfectly straight, lay them on the ground in a direction parallel to each other at a distance apart of two feet," etc. An upper portion of the Mauryan stockade preserved in the Indian Museum, Calcutta comprises immense teak-wood posts connected by transverse bars, suggesting that it was an enlarged adaptation of the Vedic village railing previously described.