This is the third part of the series on Pataliputra

The imperial palaces and other royal buildings sprawled across a huge walled compound in the heart of Pataliputra. Armed guards checked the identity of every visitor. Inside the main gate were the royal storehouses, where soldiers and officials collected their pay.

Next came the almshouses, where, on fixed days of the year, the king would hand out food to the sick and the poor.

On the edge of the palaces were large public enclosures supported by hundreds of carved and gilded pillars, decorated with silver birds and golden vines. The halls were used for royal audiences and banquets. Traces of one pillared hall survive in the form of 84 heaps of stone lying in rows. Alongside, in a richly decorated gallery, the city’s painters and sculptors celebrated the achievements of their royal master.

Beyond the halls lay private apartments to which only senior nobles and officials had access. Inside the apartments, a royal arsenal held stores of all kinds of weapons ready for times of war. The treasury, beside the king’s personal rooms, housed a hoard of precious stones, incense, and bars of gold, silver, and iron.

Guards patrolled it night and day, and from its contents, a team of jewellers created works of art.

A series of pavilions scattered through the formal gardens contained the private rooms used by the royal family. The interiors were light and airy, and the rooms were umptuously furnished with cane and wooden furniture, rich fabrics and animal skin.

The royal residents could look out over gardens stocked with ornamental trees of every variety. Peacocks and tame gazelles wandered about between flowers, fountains, and fish ponds.

Among the buildings in the gardens was one which did not have much of a view. This was the harem where the royal princesses and concubines lived, ruled by the reigning queen.

Outside its walls, armed women, often dressed as men, stood guard. Occasionally, the queen and the princesses strolled through their own gardens, or accompanied one another on excursions into the city or to the river, escorted by their female guards.

On rare occasions, the entire court would parade through the city streets to attend a religious festival or watch animal fights staged for the amusement of the people in arenas outside the city walls.

Pataliputra was a city that could afford luxury and extravagance on an almost unimaginable scale. Its wealth depended on trade, and it controlled the Ganga — the main freight route across the north of India.

Along the city’s northern walls, dozens of wharves stretched into the great river. Boats shuttled between landing places and warehouses, unloading merchandise. Food was a common freight — the population of Pataliputra was too large to feed itself from the produce of its own lands alone.

Cotton, stone, timber, and luxury goods also passed through the docks. The population of the city grew as people were drawn by its wealth, and new satellite towns sprang up nearby to house the growing population.

To be continued