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BUDDHIST INDIA
it interesting, and some of it not found elsewhere. Perhaps the most important is the all-too-short description of Paṭaliputta, the capital of Magadha, at which Megasthenes resided.
"The greatest city in India is that which is called Palimbothra, in the dominions of the Prasians, where the streams of the Erannoboas [this a Greek corruption of Hiraññavati] and the Ganges unite. Megasthenes informs us that this city stretched in the inhabited quarters to an extreme length on each side of 80 stadia [nearly 10 miles], and that its breadth was fifteen stadia [nearly 2 miles], and that a ditch encompassed it all round, 600 feet in breadth and 30 cubits in depth, and that the wall was crowned with 570 towers and four-andsixty gates. The same writer tells us this remarkable fact about India, that all the Indians are free, and that not one of them is a slave." "
These particulars about the size and the fortifications of Pataliputta in 300 B.C. are new; and are, no doubt, also true. The number of towers allows one to every seventy-five yards, so that archers, in the towers, could cover the space intervening between any two. The number of gates would allow one to each 660 yards, which is quite a probable and convenient distance. The extent of the fortifications is indeed prodigious. Ten miles, along the river, is just the distance from the Tower of London to Hammersmith Bridge; or, if taken in a straight line, is the distance from Greenwich to Richmond; and from the river at the Chelsea Embankment to the Marble Arch is just two miles, south to north. All of 1 Arrian, Ind., ch. x.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
