Bihar is dotted with the footprints of
celebrities. Famous writer E M Forster spent some time in Bihar and it can be
argued that the Malabar caves in his book A Passage to India resemble the
Barabar caves outside Gaya too much for it to be a mere coincidence. He stayed
at the then Dak Bungalow (now Loknayak Bhavan) and Bankipur Club in Patna.
In order to have a fairly understandable picture of the continually changing pattern of Bihar with particular reference to Patna, in the ancient and medieval periods, one has to rely mostly on foreigners — Greek and Chinese as well as English and other Europeans such as Ralph Fitch (1588), Peter Mundy (1632), Hugh and Parkar (1620-21), John Marshall (1468-72) and Buchanan (1812).
But we have first to consider briefly the excavations undertaken by Spooner and P C Mukherjee (1892-93) with the generous grants received from Sir Ratan Tata as well as the subsequent discoveries and findings of Col Waddell, McCrindle and M R Ghosh.
Peter Mundy, who arrived at Patna from Agra on August 6, 1632, found it (Patna) “a very long and great city, lying along the river Ganges with outskirts in length about three miles”.
The BA lecture theatre of Patna College was constructed in 1887 and connected with the main building by a long western corridor. The whole complex looked so impressive that one can have its glimpses in E M Forster’s A Passage to India and Satyajit
In order to have a fairly understandable picture of the continually changing pattern of Bihar with particular reference to Patna, in the ancient and medieval periods, one has to rely mostly on foreigners — Greek and Chinese as well as English and other Europeans such as Ralph Fitch (1588), Peter Mundy (1632), Hugh and Parkar (1620-21), John Marshall (1468-72) and Buchanan (1812).
But we have first to consider briefly the excavations undertaken by Spooner and P C Mukherjee (1892-93) with the generous grants received from Sir Ratan Tata as well as the subsequent discoveries and findings of Col Waddell, McCrindle and M R Ghosh.
Peter Mundy, who arrived at Patna from Agra on August 6, 1632, found it (Patna) “a very long and great city, lying along the river Ganges with outskirts in length about three miles”.
The BA lecture theatre of Patna College was constructed in 1887 and connected with the main building by a long western corridor. The whole complex looked so impressive that one can have its glimpses in E M Forster’s A Passage to India and Satyajit
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