Part 5 - Urban centres in South Bihar (a): Aṅga Circle

In South Bihar we note the culmination of the process of settlement growth in the rise of three distinct sets of urban complexes as the capitals and administrative centres. Their physical attribution was mainly in the form of fortification. The fortification took place in two phases. In the first phase sites came to be fortified in the 6^th- 5^th centuries BCE and then in the second phase in the 2^nd- 1^st centuries BCE. The bastions at several sites including Rajghat, Kauśāmbī, Campā and Rajgir were earthen and unfit for military defence. They just played a symbolic function of separating the organised inner life of the city with the chaotic outside. Ruins of Campā the Aṅga mahājanapada lies in Nathnagar, in the outskirts of the modern Bhagalpur shows these two phases distinctly.

Campā stood as the earliest fortified centres along with Rajgir, Atranjikhera, Rajghat and Kauśāmbī and the fortification here dated 6^th century BCE of the BRW legacy was identified as a mud embankment rather than a fortification and therefore the site did not attain an urban status. From the 3^rd century BCE these mud ramparts were supplemented with brick walls. From this layer were discovered NBPW sherds, coins, terracotta figurines, seals. The addition to the wall was made in the Śuṅga period. The chief functions of them were to check erosion and to provide defence.^[1] The defensive wall of Campā was surrounded by a moat and the site was located close to the Gaṅgā. It was connected to Rajgir and Pāṭaliputra and urban centres of the north Bihar but Pudranagara and Tamralipta and had a great fame of being the most important riverine port that controlled maritime trade of the south East Asia. At the site, many brick built houses and one plastered drain from the Śuṅga-Gupta period have been discovered.^[2]