Banka Bihar - III : Patna
Patna , or Patliputra the city that was founded by Magadh king Ajatshatru on the banks of river Gnaga, the nucleus of the kingdom of Ashoka and the present day capital of the state of Bihar is an intrestingmix of a city with a magnificent past and the one that is positively looking towards a bright future. Ancient travelers like Fe - Hein called it as city built by super humans and Megasthenes has written elobrately about its places.But by the time Huan - tsang reached Patna, he could only mention its past glory. As a 21st CE traveler I could see a Patna that has its eyes firmly on the future but a city that is still grounded in its roots and doesn't seem to be following the west rampantly.
Holding the snippets of its past is Patna museum , probaly one of the richest museum in terms of archeological heritage in the country. As you enter the museum , the shining statue of Didarganj Yakshi or the chawri (whisk) bearer welcomes you and you can be completely awed by it. The life size idol of a women wearing heavy jewellery and just the lower garment, with hair neatly tied at the back with whisk in one and the other hand broken stands tall in front of you. You can simply admire the artist who would have made this and you instantly mourn the loss of other such precious idols that have been lost over time. I wondered if the whisk bearer is so beautiful, imagine how the one who is being whisked would be. Just by the side of the Yakshi you can also see the first Digambar Jain image a nude make torso found Lohanipur.There is an earliest image of Shalbhanjika with Maurayan polish.There are many more treasures from the 3rd BCE to 11th CE that you can admire.There are images from all three primary religious that flourished in this part of the country viz Hinduism , Jainism and Buddhism or jain image showing the trampling of Hindu deities tell us that times were not as peaceful and people were not as tolerant as we think them to be today. We were lucky to have a scholar as our guide and he explained us all the figure in detail.
The most celebrated part of the mesuem in the Buddha relics that are kept here and making it a palace of pilgrimage for Buddhists. The relics are kept in absolute security and you have to buy an additional ticket to see them. The bronze gallary has some of the biggest pieces of Bronze that have been found from the pre-historic times. The terracotta gallary has small terracotta from harappen times to Kushan Shunga period including the Maurayan period. The image gave a lot of insights into the lifestyles of the common people and the revered figures like mother goddess. There are items of everyday use , toys, jewellery, seals, and potteries with simplegeometrical design of them. It is amazing how a complete expressionwit headgear and dress is expressed in a small statue of 2-4 inch. There is a gallary of Buddhist or Thankha paintings. There is a fossil tree measuring 53ft considered to be one one of the longest of its type. Rajendra gallary displays the personal belongings of Dr. Rajendra Prasadwho hailed form the city. We missed having a look at the Patna Kalam gallary of medieval paintings. Museum is a fairly well maintained building though the display can be given better lighting and more explanation.
Agam kuan is an ancient well that is said to exist since the time of Ashoka. He is supposed to have murdered his 99 brothers and thrown their bodies in this very well. Today , the well has right red colours wall and you can views the inside only through small windows mase in the high wall.There is a Sheetla Devi temple just by the well and it is said that priest of Brahmins used to use this well for rituals.They also said that it is impossible to drain out the water of this well and anyone who tries to do so will be destroyed. One of the locals told us that the former chief minister of state Lalu Yadav had tried to empty this well to let down the Brahmins but could not empty it and from dayhis downfall started , Now , Is this not how the storied were created and passed on orally?
Kumarahar is the place where the sabha or assembly hall of Chandragupta I and emperor Ashoka was . The 80 pillared hall is the one that expert say has been mentioned in the sabha Parva of Mahabharata. As of now you can see only the place it was and you have use your imagination to imagine the glory that place would have seen. There is an excavated pillar placed there and you can only admire the polish of the half broken pillar. At some distance , There is an excavation that shows the monastery cum hospital of famous phusician of Gupta period Dhanvantari , appropriately called Arogyavihar. Apprently there was an inscription telling this. As of now you can only see the ruins of the place having some small rooms , it is impossible to visualize anything more than that . To create the ambience the monastery is now surrounded by a well mainatined herbal garden. There is a small site museum , which we could not see because there was a power and and it was completely dark.
Patna sahib , the birthplace of 10th guru of Sikhs , guru Govind Singh is a peaceful island in the midest of otherwise chaotic part of Patna. Like most other famous Gurudwara , this was also built by Maharaja Ranjit Singh , on the banks of Ganga. Besides Guru Gobind Singh who spent his early years here , Guru Nanak Dev and Guru Tegh Bahadur also visited Patna. Guru Nanak dev had stayed at this very place on this very place on his way to Gaya and so did Guru Tegh Bahadur. This is one of the five Takhts or holy seats of Sikhs. Built in all white , the typical colour of Gurudwaras, the place suddenly makes you snap what is ouside and focus on the inside. The light devotional music playing will help you connect with yourself and of course the Kadha Prasad that you get from here is something to die for. Just adjacent to the Patna Sahib Gurudwara is an ancient Jain temple that is presently being renovated In the make shift temple we could see some ancient idols of various teerthankaras.
One of the gems that we discovered at Patna was the Khuda Bakhsh Library. The library has more than 21000 oriental manuscripts and 2.5 million books has been open to public for more than 120 years. It is forward - looking library as it is digitizing all its assests . We got a very crisp presentation from management. of the library that showcased the lineage of library, the type of assest it has and a glimpse of them. The publication division has lot of publication that give you the history of the region and thoughts of the famous thinker of the region. The library has a reading room that seems to be very popular. It was a a sheer pleasure to see some of the age old hand written manuscripts. There is liberal use of gold and most scripts we saw were multilingual . It made me think about the evolution of books. First there were pictures , then pictures nad poetry , then pictures and words, and then only words and now we seem to be going back to the combination of pictures and words though the technology is entirely different with our mechanized writing , painting and printing techniques.
Golghar is an interesting building , a huge round building meant to be a granary with a staircase winding about it taking you to top of it. The climb is huge and at peak noontime we could not dare to climb it, though I think it would have been a fun thing to do early morning. The sheer size of the building will amaze you and I am curious to know how they filled it with grains and how they look it out. There is a huge Karuna stupa being built where the relics of Buddha from 6 countries would be kept.It is a huge structure coming up very close to the Patna Railway Station.
The bazaars in Patna were bustling with people like any other big city. Here and there, there were Litti Chokha shops selling the most consumed food of Bihar, followed by the Khaja shops which seems to be the favorite sweet of the people of Bihar. The shopping complexes are there but local market and bazaars seems to be more popular . we did not see any shopping malls and I guess that is what Patna different today from other big cities. I loved the sing song way of talking and the Shuddh Hindi that is hardly spoken in any other part of the country.
Iam sure there are many more places to be seen in patna and I look forward to my next trip there
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