Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s15.32.2

c12.s15.32.2

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.