Patna

Patna, called also AZIMABAD, a city of Bengal, 140 miles E. of Benares by rail, extends 9 miles along the Ganges and 2 miles back from the river; but the streets are narrow and crooked, and the houses mostly mean in appearance. Apart from the Gola or government granary (1786), the government opium-factories, Patna College, the shrine of Shah Arzani, the mosque of Sher Shah, a Roman Catholic church, and a Mohammedan college, there are no buildings of moment. Its railway communication, and its central position at the junction of three great rivers, the Son, the Gandak, and the Ganges, avenges for the traffic of the North-west Provinces, render Patna of great importance as a commercial centre. The chief imports are cotton goods, oil-seeds, salt, sugar, wheat, and other cereals; they reach an annual value of nearly 4 million sterling. The exports, principally oil-seeds and salt, with cotton, spices, English piece-goods, cocoa-nuts, and tobacco, exceed 6½ million sterling in value. Patna, under its early name of Pataliputra, is supposed to have been founded about 600 B.C. It was visited by Megasthenes, the Greek historian, about 300 B.C., and called Palibothra by him. In modern times Patna is notable as the scene of a massacre of British prisoners by Mir Kasim in 1763, which led to war and annexation by the English, and for the mutiny at Dinapur, the military station of Patna, in 1857. Patna ranks as fifteenth city of India in point of population: pop. (1872) 158,900; (1891) 165,192.—The district has an area of 2079 sq. m., and a pop. near two millions; the division, an area of 23,726 sq. m., and a pop. of fifteen millions.