The Mauryan capital of Pataliputra has been associated with the archaeological remains of

Correct — C, Kumrahar and Bulandibagh. Both are localities in modern Patna, and both were dug in the excavations D. B. Spooner ran for the Archaeological Survey between 1912 and 1915 on money given by Ratan Tata. Kumrahar produced the famous pillared hall — the stumps and sockets of eighty polished sandstone columns set in rows on a wooden platform, the Mauryan assembly hall or palace that Ashoka's court would have used. Bulandibagh produced the other half of the picture: a double row of massive sal-wood uprights with cross-beams, the timber city wall, along with a wooden drain and terracotta figurines. That timber palisade is the find that matches Megasthenes, who described Palibothra as girdled by a wooden wall with sixty-four gates and five hundred and seventy towers.

• (a)Bulandibagh and Rajagriha — Bulandibagh belongs to Pataliputra, but Rajagriha is Rajgir in Nalanda district, the earlier Magadhan capital of Bimbisara and Ajatashatru with its cyclopean stone wall and hill forts. It was abandoned as the capital before the Mauryas.
• (b)Kumrahar and Mocharim — Half right and half invented. Kumrahar is the pillared-hall site, but no Mauryan capital locality of this name figures in the Pataliputra excavations.
• (d)Kumrahar and Jalalgarh — Jalalgarh is a fort in Purnia district in north-east Bihar, built in the eighteenth century and unconnected with the Mauryan capital.

Pataliputra sat where the Son once joined the Ganga, and the modern city of Patna covers it, so the Mauryan capital survives only in pockets that happened to escape later building. Kumrahar and Bulandibagh are the two such pockets. Between them they yield the state architecture of the empire — a hall of polished monolithic columns, and the wooden defences the Greek ambassador described.

The dating rests on more than the buildings. Kumrahar's columns are of Chunar sandstone carrying the same mirror-like Mauryan polish as the Ashokan pillars, and radiocarbon work on the Bulandibagh timbers puts them in the Mauryan centuries. The site also gives us the sequence: Ajatashatru's fort at Pataligrama on the river, the shift of the Magadhan capital there, then the Mauryan city, then Sunga and Kushana layers above it. An examiner who wants a single association will always reach for the eighty-pillared hall.

• Kumrahar in Patna yielded a hall of eighty polished sandstone pillars set on a wooden platform.
• Bulandibagh yielded the wooden palisade of the city wall, together with a wooden drain and terracottas.
• Megasthenes, Seleucus Nikator's envoy at Chandragupta's court, described Palibothra as walled in timber with 64 gates and 570 towers.
• The 1912-15 excavations were directed by D. B. Spooner and paid for by Ratan Tata.
• Rajagriha, the earlier Magadhan capital, is a different site altogether — Rajgir in Nalanda district, ringed by hills and a stone wall.

• Reading Rajagriha into any Magadhan question; it is the pre-Mauryan capital, not Pataliputra.
• Pairing the pillared hall with Bulandibagh and the palisade with Kumrahar, which reverses the two finds.
• Treating Megasthenes' numbers as measured survey data rather than as a report that the excavation happens to corroborate.

A site-to-find association. The safe preparation is one sentence per site, naming what came out of the ground there.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The wooden palisade of the Mauryan capital, matching the description left by Megasthenes, was found at

  • (a)Kumrahar
  • (b)Bulandibagh
  • (c)Rajgir
  • (d)Vaishali

  Answer(b) Bulandibagh — a double row of sal-wood uprights forming the city wall.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The eighty-pillared hall of Pataliputra was built of

  • (a)brick faced with lime plaster
  • (b)polished sandstone monoliths
  • (c)black basalt
  • (d)unbaked clay

  Answer(b) polished sandstone monoliths — carrying the same Mauryan mirror polish as the Ashokan pillars.