Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c8.45

c8.45

A not dissimilar sequence is indicated by the more imposing site of the ancient city of Ahichchhatrā, near Ramnagar in the Bareilly district of U.P. and close to a tributary of the Ganges.¹⁷ The city was the capital of the kingdom of North Pāñchāla which, in the Mahābhārata, was wrested from the king of Pāñchāla by the Kurus. It retained something of its metropolitan status until about A.D. 1100, when it was replaced by the modern Badaun. Today the deserted city looms majestically over the plain, with towering ramparts 3½ miles in circuit, the tall fragment of a medieval temple within them. Inconclusive excavation in 1940-4 showed two successive earthen ramparts below a stout wall of baked brick, and P.G. Ware is said to have been found below, as well as in, the earlier rampart. If so, the rampart should not be later than 500 B.C. and may be somewhat earlier. The excavators recognized nine main strata in the total life-span of the town, and observed that each stratum had its own individual plan, with differing building-alignments. As at Hastināpura, coins (square and round) came into use during the N.B.P. Ware period.