Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c10.17

c10.17

The general credibility of Megasthenes is supported by a further discovery: that of a part of the wooden fortification which he describes. In 1926-7 digging disclosed a double line of upright timbers, 15 feet high, 14½ feet between the parallel lines, and bonded together by a 'floor' and a 'roof' of cross-timbers. The strange structure was interrupted by a transverse timber drain, but appeared to the excavator to 'extend almost indefinitely'. Whether it was a passage within an earthen rampart or whether, as is more likely, it was filled with earth and formed its core or revetment, was not ascertained but could be determined, no doubt, by trained observation. Unless the timber breakwaters of Ujjain be included (above, p. 144), this type of fortification is at present without analogy in India, though it fits in happily with the remarks of Megasthenes about the use of timber on riverine sites.