PALIBOTHRA, the ancient Greek name of Pataliputra city, near the confluence of the Sone river with the Ganges. Few old places in India recall to mind so many associations as the Patali putra of the Hindus, the Palibothra of the Greeks, and the Po-to-li-tse of the Chinese, all referring to the city which is known in our day under the name of. Patna. Rennell says (Memoir, pp. 52-54) Pliny's Palibothra is clearly Patna, and as Strabo placed it 425 miles, or so many parts in 1063 of the distance from the confluence of the Jumna to the mouth of the Ganges, he probably meant the same place. The name of Pataliputra does not occur either in Menu or the Mahabharata, the capital of ancient Magadha having in those ages been Rajagriha. It was in the middle of the 6th century B.C. that Ajata Satru founded the city of Pataliputra. This prince, says Lassen, appears to have long had the intention of con quering Vasali, for it is recorded that his two ministers, Sunitha and Vasyankara, founded, in the village of Patali, a fortress against the Vrijji: This took place a short time before the death of Buddha. Under the ancient name of Pataliputra, the place stands before the eyes of the modern traveller as the capital of the Nanda dynasty, of Chandragupta, and of Asoka, as the scene where were played those outwitting Machiavellian poli cies between Rakshasa and Chanakya, which form the subject of the drama of Mudra Rakshasa and Chanakya ; where Megasthenes had arrived on an embassy from Seleucus, and resided several years, leaving behind a record that possesses no ordinary claims upon our attention ; whence Asoka, issued his famous edicts about Buddhism, identified by General Cunningham with the modern Besarh, 20 miles north of Hajipur. It is from the writings of
Megastbenes that we learn that Palibothra was 8 miles long, and lir broad, defended by a deep ditch and a high rampart with 570 towers and 64 gates, a state of grandeur of which not a tithe is possessed by the present city. In the time of the Muhammadan conquest, the capital of Behar is said to have been removed to the town of that name, and its raja to have become so degenerated as to abscond from his capital. As described by Ralph Fitch, Patna, in the end of the 16th century, was a large city, but contained only houses of earth and straw. Of the towers and gateways spoken of by Megasthenes, or of the lofty pillars, columns, and turrets of the Suganga palace, mentioned by the Hindu dramatist, not a trace exists surviving the ravages of time and war. Muhammadans now form a large part of the population of Patna, 40,000, and from the district 100,000 of them assemble at the Imambarah to celebrate the Maharram. At Patna is a monument over 150 Englishmen massacred (1763) in cold blood by Sumru (Reinhardt), under the orders of Mir Cassim. It is a tall, slender column of alternate black and yelloiv stone, that lifts its head about 30 feet high in the old English burial-ground at Patna.—Bunsen, 520 ; Tr. of Hind. i. 113 ; As. Res. v. 273, viii. 333, xiv. 380.