' PATNA, a city on the right bank of the Ganges in Bengal, in lat. 25° 37' 15' N., and long. 85" 12' 31" E., with a population of 158,900 souls. It gives its name to a revenue district, and to a revenue commissionership, the latter of 23,72G square miles, and a population in 1872 of 13,122,743 perdons. Patna has been identified with Patali putra of the ancient Hindus, the Palibothra men tioned by the Greek historian Megasthenes, who came as ambassador from Seleucus''Nieator to the court of Sandracottus or Chandragupta at Patali putra, about the year 300 B.C. ; and the river Erranoboas of Greek writers is the Hiranya baba or told-bearing stream of the Hindus, the Sone river ,of the present day. It was also anciently known as KusumaPura, also Pushpapura.
Strabo and Pliny agree with Arrian in calling the people of Palibothra by the name of Prasii, which modern writers have unanimously referred to the Sanskrit Prachya or eastern.' But it has seemed to General Cunningham that Prasii is only the Greek form of Palasiya or Parasiya, a man of Palasa or Parasa,' which is an actual and well known name of Magadha, of which Palibothra was the capital. It obtained this name from the Palasa, or Butea frondosa, Which still grows as luxuriantly in the province as in the time of Hiwen Thsang. The common form of the name is Paras, or, ,when quickly pronounced, Pras, which he takeS to be the true original of the Greek Prasii. This derivation is supported by the spelling of the name given by Curtius, who calls the people Pharrasii, which is an almost exact transcript of the Indian name Parasiya. The
Praxiakos of ./Elian is only the derivative from Parasar. The city extends for nearly 9 miles along the Ganges, from the suburb of Bankipore on the west, to Jafar Khan's garden on the east. Patna has a Sikh colony. There is a huge incom plete domed granary, built in 1784-1786, which was utilized in the Bengal famine of 1873. In 1851, Maharaja Jung Bahadur rode up its winding staircase. In 1876-77, the imports and exports of Patna town (excluding Government Monopoly of opiinn, and probably omitting a good deal besides) were registered to a value of 7-1 millions sterling. The imports alone amounted to more than 4 milliOns. On 6th Oct.1763, a number of the British were massacred here by order of Mir Kasim. He wrote to the English authorities, If you are resolved to proceed in this business, know for a certainty that I will cut off the beads of Mr. Ellis and the rest of your chiefs, and send them to yoti.', This threat he carried out with the help of Samru, a Swiss (Walter Reinhardt), on the evening of the 6th October. Mr. Ellis and others, according to a contemporary , letter, were decoyed one by One out of the room where they were drinking tea, at seven o'clock, and instantly cut down. About 60 British were thus murdered, their bodies being thrown into a well in the compound of the house in which they were confined. It is said that 200 British were killed at this time throughout Bengal.—As. Res. v. p. 280, ix. p. 46, xiv. p. 393.