Kumhrar (Ancient Pataliputra)

The excavated remains of the Mauryan capital Pataliputra, including the columns of Ashoka's hundred-pillared hall

Kumhrar, in the southern part of Patna, is the archaeological site where the ancient city of Pataliputra has been excavated. Pataliputra was the capital of the Maurya and Gupta empires -- the city of Ashoka, Chandragupta, and the philosopher Chanakya -- and one of the largest cities in the ancient world, with a population estimated at 400,000 around 300 BCE.

The visible remains are modest: a few of the eighty original sandstone columns of Ashoka's audience hall, fragments of wooden palisades, and foundations of Mauryan buildings. There is a small site museum. For most visitors the site is more about imagination than spectacle -- but standing among the column stumps you are at the centre of one of the great vanished cities.

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A story
When the Chinese pilgrim Faxian visited Pataliputra in the early fifth century CE, he wrote that the palaces of Ashoka were so grand they could only have been built by spirits, not men. By the time Xuanzang arrived two centuries later, the city was in ruins. Archaeologists at Kumhrar in 1912 found the carbonised remains of an enormous wooden hall that may have been the audience hall Faxian described.

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