Magadha's Pataliputra still anchors Bihar's capital
Patna, once Pataliputra, is Bihar's capital and largest city and among the world's oldest continuously inhabited places. Tradition dates a Magadha royal founding to 490 BCE when Ajatashatru sought a new capital away from hilly Rajagrha. It remained a major trading hub into the nineteenth century.
Buddhist tradition says Ajatashatru of Magadha fortified a site on the Ganges around 490 BCE to confront the Licchavis of Vaishali, and the Buddha passed through in his final year, forecasting greatness along with ruin by flood, fire and feud. Legend credits a King Putraka with conjuring the city for his queen Patali, meaning trumpet flower; over two thousand years it was also called Kusumapura, Azimabad and more, and the modern name may honour the goddess Patan Devi or the patli tree. As Pataliputra it served as capital under the Haryanka, Nanda, Maurya, Shunga, Gupta and Pala dynasties, housing about 400,000 people around 300 BCE and scholars such as Aryabhata and Chanakya.
Megasthenes, envoy to Chandragupta Maurya, called it the greatest city on earth and measured it at about 14 kilometres by 2.8. The Chinese monk Faxian, visiting around 400 CE, admired free hospitals for the poor. After the Guptas fell, Bakhtiar Khilji's twelfth-century conquest ended its standing, until Sher Shah Suri rebuilt a fort and town in the mid-1500s; his mosque survives. Akbar's chronicler Abul Fazl praised its paper, glass and famous rice, and in 1704 Aurangzeb let his grandson Azim rename it Azimabad.
European traders flocked in. The English East India Company opened a calico and silk factory in 1620, and saltpetre shipped downriver drew Dutch, French, Danish and Portuguese rivals; in 1632 Peter Mundy called it the east's greatest market. In 1763 Nawab Mir Qasim had 45 mostly British Company employees and 200 sepoys shot in the Patna massacre, and the Company annexed the area in 1793. Patna became capital of Bihar and Orissa in 1912 and stayed Bihar's capital after independence and the 2000 split with Jharkhand.
The United Nations counted 3.33 million residents in 2026, making it India's nineteenth largest city. The birthplace of Guru Gobind Singh, it lies mainly on the Ganges' south bank near Nalanda, Bodh Gaya and Rajgir, and in 2009 the World Bank ranked it second in India for ease of starting a business.
Source: Patna
