The site of Mauryan Palace is the remains of ancient Pataliputra namely the Eighty pillared hall and Arogya Vihar are located at Kumrahar about six kms east of Patna railway station.

 

Ancient literature refers Pataliputra by various names like Pataligrama, Patalipura, Kusumapura, Pushpapura or Kusumdhvaj. One can easily find the description of this place from the famous Greek ambassador at the court of Chandragupta Maurya, who mentions it as Palibothra in his book named Indica. As per him the city spread like a parallelogram about 14 kms east-west along the river Ganges and 3 kms north-south. The circumference of the city was about 36 kms. The 72 pillared hall was found during the excavation in the year 1912-15 conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India under D.B. Spooner with the funds donated by Sir Ratan Tata. Th remaining 8 pillars of the hall was found during the excavation in 1951-55 by K.P. Jayaswal research Institute, Patna and four additional ones belonging to the entrance or porch. Since then it is popularly referred as the ‘Eighty Pillared Hall and were made of black spotted buff sandstone monoliths with a lustrous shine typical of the Mauryan period. Regarding the nature of this hall, it has been variously assigned as the palace of Asoka, audience hall, throne room of Mauryas, a pleasure hall or the conference hall for the third Buddhist council held at Pataliputra in 3rd Century B.C. during the reign of Asoka.