Maurya and Shunga Art c5.16.2

c5.16.2

Writing about Indian towns Arrian says, “All their towns which are down beside the rivers or the sea are made of wood ; for towns built of brick would never hold out for any length of time with the rains on the one hand, and on the other, the rivers which rise above their banks and spread a sheet of water over the plains. But the towns which are built on elevated places out of reach, these are built of brick and clay.” The excavations of Waddell and Spooner admirably confirm what we are told by Strabo, Arrian and early Sanskrit and Pali writers, and constitute one more proof of the fact that before the employment of stone for building purposes, wood was generally the only material for even the most sumptuous and magnificent buildings. Spooner’s exacavations however revealed for the first time that stone was employed for building purposes in at least one building of the Maurya royal city, and that it was a pillared hall. That the magnificent palaces of Pāṭaliputra reminded Strabo who evidently followed Megasthenes, of the palaces of Susa and Ekbatana is not without significance when it is remembered that the Maurya Pillared Hall reminded Spooner of the famous Hall of Hundred Columns erected at Persepolis by Darius the Great.