Ancient Era Traditional Buddhist literature attributes foundation of Patna 490 BCE as
Ajatashatru, the king of Magadha, wanted to shift his capital from the hilly
Rajagrha (today Rajgir) to a strategically chosen place to better combat the
Licchavis of
Vaishali. He chose the site on the bank of the Ganges and fortified the area.
Gautama Buddha travelled through this place in the last year of his life. He prophesied a great future for this place even as he predicted its ruin due to flood, fire, and feud. According to Dieter Schlingloff, the Buddhist accounts may have presented the grandeur of Patna as a prophecy and that its wooden fortifications, unlike other early historic Indian cities, indicate that it might be much older than thought but only archaeological excavation and C14 dates of its wooden palisades which is presently lacking may establish this.
Mauryan Empire , built by Ashoka.
Megasthenes, the Indo-Greek historian and ambassador to the court of Chandragupta Maurya, gave one of the earliest accounts of the city. He wrote that the city was on the confluence of the rivers
Ganga and
Arennovoas (Sonabhadra – Hiranyawah) and was long and wide.
Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to India, described the city as the greatest city on earth during its heyday. The Shungas ultimately retained control of Pataliputra and ruled for almost 100 years. The Shungas were followed by the Kanvas and eventually by the Guptas. Some Chinese travellers came to India in pursuit of knowledge and recorded their observations about
Pataliputra in their travelogues. One such famous account was recorded by a Chinese Buddhist traveller Fa Hien, who visited India between 399 and 414 CE, and stayed here for many months translating Buddhist texts. When the Chinese Buddhist Monk
Faxian visited the city in 400 A.D, he found the people to be rich and prosperous; they practised virtue and justice. He found that the nobles and householders of the city had constructed several hospitals in which the poor of all countries, the needy, the crippled, and the diseased, could get treatment. They could receive every kind of help gratuitously. Physicians would inspect the diseases and order them food, drink, and medicines.
Gupta and Pala empire In the years that followed, many dynasties ruled the Indian subcontinent from the city, including the
Gupta Empire and the
Pala kings. With the disintegration of the Gupta empire, Patna passed through uncertain times.
Bakhtiar Khilji captured Bihar in the 12th century and destroyed everything, and Patna lost its prestige as the political and cultural centre of India.
Mughal Empire (in
Dhaka) being told about the birth of
Gobind Rai (in Patna), 19th century painting The
Mughal Empire was a period of unremarkable provincial administration from
Delhi. The most remarkable period during the Middle Ages was under the
Afghan emperor
Sher Shah Suri, who revived Patna in the middle of the 16th century. He built a fort and founded a town on the banks of the Ganges. Sher Shah's fort in Patna does not survive, although the Sher Shah Suri mosque, built in Afghan architectural style, does. Mughal emperor
Akbar reached Patna in 1574 to crush the rebellious Afghan Chief
Daud Khan. One of the
navratnas from Akbar's court, his official historian and author of "
Ain-i-Akbari"
Abul Fazl refers to Patna as a flourishing centre for paper, stone and glass industries. He also refers to the high quality of numerous strains of rice grown in Patna, famous as
Patna rice in Europe. By 1620, the city of Patna was being described as the "chiefest mart towne of all Bengala" (i.e. largest town in Bengal) in northern India, "the largest town in Bengal and the most famous for trade". This was before the founding of the city of Calcutta.
Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb acceded to the request of his favourite grandson,
Prince Muhammad Azim, to rename Patna as
Azimabad, in 1704 while Azim was in Patna as the
subedar. Patna or Azimabad did see some violent activities, according to Phillip Mason, writing in the book "The Men Who Ruled India". "Aurangzeb had restored the poll tax (Jazia) on unbelievers, which had to be compounded for. In Patna, Peacock, the factory's chief, was not sufficiently obedient. He was seized, forced to walk through the town bare-headed and bare-footed, and subjected to many other indignities before he paid up and was released." Little changed during this period other than the name. With the decline of the Mughal empire, Patna moved into the hands of the
Nawabs of Bengal, who levied a heavy tax on the populace but allowed it to flourish as a commercial centre. The mansions of the Maharaja of
Tekari Raj dominated the Patna riverfront in 1811–12. In 1750, the future Nawab of Bengal,
Siraj ud-Daulah revolted against his grandfather,
Alivardi Khan, and seized Patna, but quickly surrendered and was forgiven.
Guru Gobind Singh (22 December 1666 – 7 October 1708), the tenth Guru of the Sikhs, was born as Gobind Rai in Patna to
Guru Teg Bahadur, the ninth Guru of the Sikhs, and his wife
Mata Gujri. His birthplace,
Patna Sahib, is one of the most sacred sites of pilgrimage for Sikhs.
Portuguese Empire As trade grew, settlements of the Portuguese empire expanded to the Bengal Gulf. Since at least 1515, the Portuguese were in Bengal as traders, and later in 1521, an embassy was sent to Gaur to create factories in the region. The Bengal Sultan after 1534 allowed the Portuguese to develop several settlements as Chitagoong e Satgaon. In 1535 the Portuguese were allied with the Bengal sultan and held the Teliagarhi pass 280 km from Patna helping to avoid the invasion by the Mughals. By then, several of the products came from Patna, and the Portuguese sent in traders, establishing a factory there in 1580 at least. The products were shipped out down the river until other Portuguese ports as Chittagoon e Satgaoon, and from there to the rest of the empire.
British Empire During the 17th century, Patna became a centre of international trade. After the decisive
Battle of Buxar of 1764, the
treaty of Allahabad marked the start of the political and constitutional involvement of the British in India. It gave the East India Company the right to collect a tax of this former Mughal province by the Mughal emperor. Patna was annexed by the company in 1793 to its territory when Nizamat (Mughal suzerainty) was abolished, and the British East India Company took control of the province of Bengal-Bihar. Patna, however, continued as a trading centre. In 1912, when the
Bengal Presidency was partitioned, Patna became the capital of the British province of
Bihar and Orissa. However, in 1936
Orissa became a separate entity with its capital. To date, a major population of Bengalis continue to live in Patna. File:Sir Charles D'Oyly - Street in Patna - Google Art Project.jpg|Street in Patna, 1825 (British, active in India) File:Golghar at Bankipur, near Patna, 1814-15.jpg|
Golghar at
Bankipore, near Patna, 1814–15
Indian Independence Movement People from Patna were greatly involved in the
Indian independence movement. Most notable movements were the
Champaran movement against the
Indigo plantation and the 1942
Quit India Movement. National leaders who came from the city include
Swami Sahajanand Saraswati; the first President of the
Constituent Assembly of India,
Dr. Rajendra Prasad;
Bihar Vibhuti (
Anugrah Narayan Sinha);
Basawon Singh (Sinha); and
Loknayak (
Jayaprakash Narayan).
Post-Independence Patna remained the capital of
Bihar after India gained independence in 1947, even as
Bihar was partitioned again in 2000 when
Jharkhand became a separate state of the Indian union. On 3 October 2014, 33 people were killed and 26 injured in a
stampede at Gandhi Maidan during Vijaya Dashmi celebrations. ==Geography==