Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c10.15

c10.15

Megasthenes was sent by Seleukos as ambassador to the court of Chandragupta at Pāṭaliputra, adjoining Patna on the Ganges, about 302 B.C. He compiled a valuable account of the Mauryan court and administration, and extracts from it are preserved by later classical writers. The Indian towns, he says, ‘which are down beside the rivers or the sea are made of wood; for towns built of brick would never hold out’ against rain and flood. ‘But the towns which are built on elevated places out of reach, these are made of brick and clay.’ Pāṭaliputra he describes as situated at the junction of the Son and Ganges, and as being more than 9 miles long and 1¾ miles wide; in other words, it was stretched out along the bank of the Ganges in a fashion similar to that of the modern Patna. The city was surrounded by a wooden palisade with loopholes for archers, and outside the palisade was a wide and deep ditch, which served both as a defence and as a drain. Along the palisade were 570 towers and 64 gates. In the royal palace, as we are told by Aelian, following Megasthenes, there was much that was ‘calculated to excite admiration, and with which neither Susa, with all its costly splendour, nor Ecbatana, with all its magnificence, can vie. In the parks tame peacocks are kept, and pheasants which have been domesticated; and cultivated plants . . . and shady groves and pastures planted with trees, and tree-branches which the art of the woodman has deftly interwoven. . . . There are also tanks of great beauty in which they keep fish of enormous size but quite tame.' The whole description is significantly reminiscent of a Persian paradise.