Megasthenes

01At Pataliputra

After Seleucus Nicator failed to win back Alexander’s eastern provinces and made peace with Chandragupta, ceding Arachosia and Gandhara for five hundred war elephants, he sent Megasthenes as his envoy. Megasthenes had served with Sibyrtius, the satrap of Arachosia, and visited Pataliputra more than once. He describes the city on the Ganga and the Son as a parallelogram about eighty stadia long, ringed by a ditch and a timber wall with 570 towers and 64 gates. Excavations at Bulandi Bagh in Patna have uncovered long lines of timber palisade that match his account.

02What the Indika tells

Megasthenes divides the people into seven classes: philosophers, farmers, herdsmen and hunters, artisans and traders, soldiers, overseers and councillors. He says no Indian was a slave, that theft was rare, and that the farmers tilled in peace even while armies fought nearby. He writes of Brahmanas and Sramanas, of a god the Greeks called Herakles honoured by the Sourasenoi of Methora, which many read as Shri Krishna at Mathura, and of Dionysus worshipped in the hills. Some of his tales, gold-digging ants and men without mouths, came from hearsay. The fragments were gathered by E. A. Schwanbeck in 1846 and put into English by J. W. McCrindle in 1877.

Place · Fortified by Ajatashatru, made capital by Udayin, 5th century BCEPataliputraCapital of Magadha, of the Nandas, the Mauryas and the Guptas, on the Ganga where the Son once joined it. Under modern Patna lie the timber palisade Megasthenes described and the pillared hall of the Mauryas.Read →