UKPSC Prelims 2025 Q63: Which ancient city was named ‘Polibrotha’ in the Greek

Q: What is the answer to UKPSC Prelims 2025 Q63?

D. Correct — D, Patliputra. Greek and Roman writers knew the Magadhan capital as Palibothra (also printed Palimbothra), and the form given in this question is a transliteration of that same name. It reaches us through Megasthenes, the Seleucid envoy who lived at the court the Greeks called that of Sandrokottos — Chandragupta Maurya. His Indica survives only as fragments quoted by later authors such as Strabo, Arrian and Diodorus. Those fragments place the city where the Erannoboas joins the Ganges — the Erannoboas being the Son, Sanskrit Hiranyavaha. That river junction is the anchor. It fixes the city at modern Patna, which is why the Greek name resolves to **Patliputra** and not to any other city on the list. The pairing to carry away is **Palibothra is Pataliputra**, and alongside it Sandrokottos is Chandragupta Maurya — the identification on which early Indian chronology is built.

UKPSC Prelims 2025 General Studies Paper-I · Question 63 of 149

Verified against the official question booklet. Answer as per UKPSC's provisional answer key.

Answers from UKPSC's provisional answer key. The Commission publishes a provisional key for UKPSC Prelims 2025 and invites objections before issuing a final key. Every answer shown here is the Commission's own provisional answer (key PDF), not our derivation. If the final key changes an answer, this page is updated to match.

Which ancient city was named ‘Polibrotha’ in the Greek texts?

(a)Purushpur
(b)Patan
(c)Ahichhatrapur
(d)Patliputra

Answer

Why

Correct — D, Patliputra.

Greek and Roman writers knew the Magadhan capital as Palibothra (also printed Palimbothra), and the form given in this question is a transliteration of that same name.

It reaches us through Megasthenes, the Seleucid envoy who lived at the court the Greeks called that of Sandrokottos — Chandragupta Maurya.

His Indica survives only as fragments quoted by later authors such as Strabo, Arrian and Diodorus. Those fragments place the city where the Erannoboas joins the Ganges — the Erannoboas being the Son, Sanskrit Hiranyavaha.

That river junction is the anchor. It fixes the city at modern Patna, which is why the Greek name resolves to Patliputra and not to any other city on the list.

The pairing to carry away is Palibothra is Pataliputra, and alongside it Sandrokottos is Chandragupta Maurya — the identification on which early Indian chronology is built.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Purushpur — Purushapura is a north-western city, not a Ganga-valley one. Its fame belongs to the Kushana period, when Kanishka governed from it, and it survives today as Peshawar.
So it answers the Kushana capital in the north-west, modern Peshawar — a different region and a later century than the court Megasthenes described.
(b)
Patan — Patan resembles Patliputra in sound, but a resemblance in sound is not evidence about which city a Greek source is naming.
The option is printed bare, and more than one town carries the name — Patan (Lalitpur) in the Kathmandu valley, Patan in Madhya Pradesh, and Anahilavada Patan in Gujarat. The confluence the classical accounts describe settles the option whichever of them a reader had in mind.
The Gujarat one answers the Chaulukya (Solanki) capital, where Rani-ki-Vav stands — the stepwell built in memory of Bhimadeva I and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2014.
Classical Greek accounts of the Mauryan court are not describing it.
(c)
Ahichhatrapur — Ahichhatra is a genuine early historic city of the upper Ganga plain, identified with the mounds at Ramnagar in Bareilly district, Uttar Pradesh.
It answers the capital of Northern Panchala, the janapada whose division between Drupada and Drona the Mahabharata records. It is a Sanskrit-tradition name, and it is not the city the Greek accounts locate at a great river confluence.

Concept

Foreign visitors wrote Indian names in their own alphabets, and the sounds shifted as they did. Greek authors produced Palibothra for Pataliputra, Sandrokottos for Chandragupta, Erannoboas for the Hiranyavaha.

Reading these sources therefore means decoding, not just recalling. A garbled-looking name is matched to an Indian original by what the text says around it — the river, the ruler, the direction of travel.

Indian literary sources say little about the Mauryan court from the outside. The classical Greek and Roman accounts are the external testimony, which is why Megasthenes matters out of proportion to how much of him survives.

The Sandrokottos–Chandragupta equation gives Indian history a fixed date to hang on, because Greek chronology is independently dated. Palibothra sits in the same web of correspondences, and the two are usually taught together.

Key facts

Greek and Roman writers call the Magadhan capital Palibothra or Palimbothra, the city identified with Pataliputra.
Megasthenes came as an envoy of Seleucus Nicator to the court of Chandragupta Maurya, whom Greek texts name Sandrokottos.
His Indica is lost as a book and is known from fragments quoted by later writers including Strabo, Arrian and Diodorus.
Classical accounts place the city at the meeting of the Ganges with the Erannoboas, identified with the Son river, Sanskrit Hiranyavaha.
Pataliputra lies at modern Patna; excavation at Kumrahar exposed a pillared hall and Bulandibagh yielded remains of a wooden palisade.
Udayin of the Haryanka line is credited with moving the Magadhan capital from Rajagriha to Pataliputra.
Purushapura, modern Peshawar, was the seat from which Kanishka ruled in the Kushana period.
Ahichhatra, identified with Ramnagar in Bareilly district, was the capital of Northern Panchala.
Anahilavada Patan in Gujarat was the Chaulukya capital; its Rani-ki-Vav entered the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2014.

Classical Greek forms and the Indian names behind them

Palibothra / Palimbothra→Pataliputra, at modern Patna

Sandrokottos→Chandragupta Maurya

Erannoboas→Son river, Sanskrit Hiranyavaha

Taxila→Takshashila, in the north-west

Greek forms on the left, the Indian names they stand for on the right; the keyed pairing is highlighted.

Study next

Megasthenes and the Indica: what survives, and through which later authorsThe Sandrokottos–Chandragupta identification and its use in dating Mauryan rulePataliputra's archaeology — Kumrahar and BulandibaghThe shift of the Magadhan capital from Rajagriha to PataliputraPurushapura and the Kushana north-west under KanishkaAhichhatra and the Panchala janapada

Common traps

Matching the Greek name to the nearest-sounding Indian toponym rather than to the city the source actually locates — the sound resemblance between Patan and Patliputra is not evidence.
Treating an unfamiliar spelling as a different place: Palibothra, Palimbothra and the form printed here stand for one city.
Reading Erannoboas as the Yamuna or the Gandak; it is the Son, and getting the river wrong moves the city off Patna.
Carrying Purushapura's Kushana-era fame into a question set in the age of the Greek envoys — wrong region and wrong period at once.
Attributing the Indica to a surviving book rather than to fragments preserved in later Greek and Roman writers.

Compare the two items cited below. CDS 2021 names an ancient city, Taxila, and asks who identified its site on the ground; UPSC 1995 gives a Sanskrit term born of Greek contact, Yavanapriya, and asks what it denoted.

Here the classical form is supplied and the Indian city has to be recognised — the same material approached from another side. With real cities of similar standing on offer, the decision rests on the geography the source gives: the river junction.

Related PYQs

CDS_GK_2021_II_Q432021

Same problem of tying a city known from old texts to a place on the ground — there, Taxila. What differs is the target: that question asks who identified the site (the archaeologist), while this one asks which city a classical name denotes.

UPSC_1995_GS1_Q561995

Both turn on vocabulary produced by Indo-Greek contact. The difference runs in opposite directions: Yavanapriya is a Sanskrit term for a commodity the Greeks prized, whereas Palibothra is a Greek term for an Indian city.

NDA_GAT_2024_I_Q632024

Shares the theme of Greek presence supplying the key to Indian evidence — there, Indo-Greek coins helping decipher Kharosthi. That question is about scripts and the content of inscriptions; this one is about a place-name in a Greek literary account.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Classical accounts place Palibothra at the confluence of the Ganges with the Erannoboas. The Erannoboas is identified with which river?
- (a)Gandak
- (b)Son
- (c)Ghaghara
- (d)Kosi
Answerb — Erannoboas is identified in the standard accounts with Hiranyavaha, the Son, which joins the Ganga near Patna and so fixes the city's site.
The Gandak, Ghaghara and Kosi are Ganga tributaries too, but it is the Son that identification names, and the Ghaghara and Kosi meet the Ganga well away from Patna.
practice — not a real PYQ
Megasthenes, whose account of Palibothra survives in later quotations, came to the Mauryan court as the envoy of
- (a)Alexander of Macedon
- (b)Seleucus Nicator
- (c)Antiochus I
- (d)Ptolemy Philadelphus
Answerb — Seleucus Nicator sent Megasthenes to Chandragupta Maurya. Alexander's campaign turned back at the Beas, and he died before Chandragupta founded the Mauryan line.
Antiochus I is remembered for sending Deimachus, and Ptolemy Philadelphus for sending Dionysius, so those two name the wrong envoy's master.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following classical names is correctly matched with what it denotes?
- (a)Sandrokottos — Ashoka
- (b)Palibothra — Takshashila
- (c)Erannoboas — the Ganges itself
- (d)Sandrokottos — Chandragupta Maurya
Answerd — Sandrokottos is the Greek form of Chandragupta Maurya, which is why (a) fails on the same name.
Palibothra is Pataliputra, not Takshashila, so (b) is misassigned. Erannoboas is the tributary that meets the Ganges, not the Ganges, so (c) collapses the two rivers the source distinguishes.
practice — not a real PYQ
Ahichhatra, identified with the site at Ramnagar in Bareilly district, was the capital of the northern half of which janapada?
- (a)Panchala
- (b)Kosala
- (c)Vatsa
- (d)Surasena
Answera — Ahichhatra is the capital of Northern Panchala.
Kosala is associated with Shravasti and Ayodhya, Vatsa with Kaushambi, and Surasena with Mathura, so none of the other three places Ahichhatra within its territory.