Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c8.50

c8.50

FROM THE GANGES BASIN it would be logical to move eastwards into Bengal or, turning the eastern corner of the central hills, veer southward into Orissa, where the coastal flats are an extension of the great northern plains. In Orissa two imposing sites have in fact been carefully sampled, but their urban origins are unlikely to go back beyond 300 B.C. At Shishupālgarh, near Bhubaneshwar, a part of a somewhat earlier settlement was powerfully fortified, apparently in the 3rd century B.C., with a clay rampart thirty feet high laid out on a remarkably symmetrical square plan.⁶⁹ The sides of the enclosure were three-quarters of a mile long, and in each of them, apart from posterns, were two magnificent projecting gateways, built of squared laterite blocks and equipped with flanking staircases. The unusual excellence of the masonry and the extreme regularity of the planning indicate administrative authority of a high order, and it might not be unduly rash to ascribe the fortress or fortress-town, as an imperial instrument of pacification, to the emperor Ashoka after his famous victory over the Kalingas of these parts about 264 B.C. Historically at least, the defences are most unlikely to have been constructed during the following half-century.