Regional study: Pataliputra

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139059251.021

19 - Regional study: Pataliputra

from Part II - Trans-regional and regional perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015

Shonaleeka Kaul

Edited by

Craig Benjamin

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Craig Benjamin: Affiliation:
Grand Valley State University, Michigan

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Summary

The earliest reference to Pataliputra is a passing one from the Buddhist canonical texts, the Tripitaka, which were composed over the second half of the first millennium BCE. This chapter explains Ajatashatru's role in the fortification of Pataliputra; in the Puranas his grandson and successor Udayin is credited with the founding of the city. With the increasing power of Magadha and the development of trade and commerce along the Ganga, Pataliputra, located at the confluence of the Ganga and the Son rivers, must have seemed a suitable choice. Pataliputra is historically best associated with the period of Mauryan rule when it seems to have come into its own as an imperial city. Pataliputra can be understood as a product par excellence of the Second Urbanization. The high point of early Indian urban culture reached by a cosmopolis like Pataliputra is believed to have been the post-Mauryan period, that is, between the second century BCE and the third century CE.

Keywords

Middle Assyrian Empire Dark Ages Afro-Eurasian world Urartu kingdom Nebuchadnezzar II Neo-Assyrian Empire Neo-Babylonian Empire

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge World History , pp. 514 - 536

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139059251.021 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2015

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