Agra to Amritsar: Classical Period

The Greco-Buddhist era saw the makeup of Northern India resoundingly changed. This period saw the rise of Buddhism in the central Gangetic valley and the invasion of Hellenistic populations following Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Ancient known world. The historical importance of the setting of the Uttarapatha would again be demonstrated in Buddhism, as the Buddha himself reached enlightenment in Bodh Gaya and gave his first sermon in Sarnath, both of which sit along the modern GT road. The Uttarapatha also shaped the Greeks’ conquest; their armies would utilize the Khyber pass to cross into the subcontinent and descend eastward along the Ganges before turning around at the battle of Hydapses in 326 B.C.E.

From the east, a rising ruler named Chandragupta Maurya would assert control of Northern India, secure peace with the Greek Seleucid empire to the west, and engage in widespread state-building and infrastructure initiatives across his new kingdom: the Magadha empire. Chandragupta’s realm was massive, extending from Bangladesh in the east to Afghanistan in the west and from the Himalayas in the north to as far south as modern-day Kerala in South India. The Mauryans realized the difficulty in managing such a large kingdom, particularly in the ancient era when communication was a slow and dangerous endeavor. This lead Chandragupta to prioritize building roads to connect the various parts of his empire with its’ Gangetic valley-based capital, Pataliputra, to encourage economic prosperity and optomize political management. Magadha’s Greek ambassador, Megasthenes, provided much of our current knowledge about the management of this new kingdom, notably the official establishment of a trade road in India with stone pillars marking the path every kos(3.22 kilometers/1.1 miles) running from Pataliputra to Taxila in modern-day Afghanistan. This new route, along the modern GT road, was established in the 3rd c. B.C.E. based on the Achaemenid’s Great Khursan road, leading to the construction of guest houses in major cities. The third Mauryan ruler, Ashoka the Great, further upgraded the royal highway network by providing several features that would define the route into the modern day by planting trees along the path to provide shade and direction to travelers, digging wells every half kos to provide water, and constructing nimisdhayas, a predecessor to the caravansarai, along the kingdom’s routes.