Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s15.32

Language: English

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But more important evidence of Achaemenian cultural influence on the Maurya court and Maurya cultural ideology is afforded by the accounts of the city and royal palace of Pāṭaliputra left by classical authors, evidently following Megasthenes, and by the actual remains of the same city and palace unearthed by Waddell and Spooner⁵. Strabo says that the city of Palibothra was situated at the confluence of the Ganges and the Erannoboas (Hiraṇyavāha, the modern Son) ; it was 80 stadia in length and 15 in breadth and was of the shape of a parallelogram. The city was surrounded by a wooden wall pierced with loop-holes for the discharge of arrows, crowned with 560 towers and provided with 60 gates. In sumptuousness and magnificence, according to Strabo, Pāṭaliputra compared very favourably with Susa and Ecbatana. Waddell's excavations actually laid bare the remains of what had been once the city wall, and Spooner later brought to light remains of huge wooden buildings at Bulandibagh and Kumrahar, both near Patna. The remains of one of these buildings are of particular significance—those of a pillared hall in which stone columns were employed to support the roof. Of the eighty pillars that had once stood on a wooden platform and supported a wooden roof Spooner was able to discover the entire lower part of at least one in almost perfect condition—it is more or less like an Aśokan pillar, smooth, highly polished and made of grey Chunar sandstone.

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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 and Arrian, 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 excavations however revealed for the first time that stone was employed for building purposes in at least one building of the Maurya royal city, and it was a pillared hall. That the magnificent palaces of Pāṭaliputra reminded Megasthenes of the palaces of Susa and Ecbatana 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. ‘Whereas no other structure of really early date in ancient India disclosed,’ says Spooner, ‘an arrangement of pillars in square bays over the whole floor the hall at Kumrahar did show this otherwise unparalleled arrangement, and this was identical with the arrangement of the pillars in the Achaemenian Hall.

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The columns themselves moreover showed a technique in their polished surface which is not only known to have been un-Indian, and outside the line of Indian architectural development, but which again is identical with Persepolitan workmanship'. Apart from the question of the origin and morphology of the Aśokan pillars to which we shall have occasion to turn later on, there can hardly be any doubt that the Maurya Pillared Hall owed its inspiration and general design to the Hall of Hundred Columns erected by Darius. We have it on the authority of classical writers that Chandragupta's palace at Pāṭaliputra consisted of halls whose gilded pillars were adorned with golden vines and silver birds; indeed fragments of golden vines have been discovered in the excavations at Kumrahar. We know that the halls of the palaces of Ecbatana had gilded pillars constructed of cedar and cypress and golden vines of the pillars invariably recall the vines hanging over the couch of Darius—a gift of the Lydian Pythias and perhaps of Ionian workmanship.

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It is difficult to say whether the Maurya Pillared Hall at Pāṭaliputra was the conception of Chandragupta himself or one of his successors—personally I think it was built at the direction of Aśoka—but there can be no doubt that one of the three early Maurya emperors was responsible for it, nor is it unlikely that 'this adoption of the Persepolitan style of building at Pāṭaliputra was not the normal result of the contact of the Achaemenian and Indian sculptures but was due to conscious adoption of the plan of the Achaemenian Hall of Public Audience by the Mauryan emperor (Aśoka) as a part of the paraphernalia of his imperialism....'¹.