Trip down Grand Trunk Road

Under the Maurya Empire, roads were built, one from Takshashila to Pataliputra and beyond. There can never be an exact match, but that's more or less what GT Road is

The British gazetteers suggest roads were in bad shape before the British went about the task of building them. Yet, we do know roads had been built in the past. There is no contradiction. A post-Independence (1965) Varanasi district gazetteer succinctly tells us what happened. “Nevertheless, communication by road, though imperfect, was not entirely lacking in the past as the Mauryan imperial road from Pataliputra to the north-west and the Arabian Sea passed through Varanasi (although it is not known when this road was actually constructed.) It seems to have been reduced to a mere track at the time Sher Shah set about improving it. He is said to have established serais at different stages along its course… With a few variations, the course of the Grand Trunk Road follows the route of this old road… In October, 1788, Jonathan Duncan (the British resident at Varanasi) reported that the roads, even in the vicinity of the city, were in an impassable state due to their disrepair. In the following year the revenue collectors were ordered to get repaired the roads and highways within their limits. No cesses were to be levied for this purpose but the zamindars were required to supply labour for repairing the portions of the tracks lying within their estates... The terms of the Permanent Settlement (1795) required the zamindars to furnish labourers and to meet the cost of the repairs of the roads which passed through their villages.” Repairs and maintenance collapsed.

There was something known as Uttarapatha, literally, northern road. Sometimes, the term was loosely used for a region, sometimes specifically for a road. In more than one place, there are statements to the effect that Panini (in his text on grammar known as Ashtadhyayi) listed names of kingdoms along Uttarapatha. Panini did nothing of the kind. The reference in question is from V.1.77 and here is Srisa Chandra Vasu’s 1897 translation. “The affix… comes, after the word ‘uttarapatha’ in the third case in construction, in the sense of ‘who passes by that way’ and ‘what is conveyed by that way’.” (There is no need to cite the Sanskrit affix.) Panini did no more than mention Uttarapatha. Indeed, there were two major links in Uttarapatha — a northern one from Lahore to Bihar and Bengal via Jalandhar, Saharanpur, Bijnor and Gorakhpur and a southern one from Lahore to Pataliputra/Rajagriha via Bhatinda, Delhi, Hastinapur, Kanpur, Lucknow, Varanasi and Allahabad.  Kautilya clearly preferred roads to waterways (lower risk) and Arthashastra has a rich taxonomy of different types of roads.  Roads were the king’s responsibility. “He shall carry on mining operations and manufactures, exploit timber and elephant forests, offer facilities for cattle-breeding and commerce, construct roads for traffic both by land and water, and set up market towns (panyapattana)” (Shamasastry translation). For damages to a road, “Whoever throws dirt in the street shall be punished with a fine of 1/8th of a pana; whoever causes mire or water to collect in the street shall be fined 1/4th of a pana; whoever commits the above offences in the king's road (rajamarga) shall be punished with double the above fines.”

National Highways are numbered differently now. All North-South highways now have even numbers, starting in the East and increasing in number towards the West

Understandably, under the Mauryan Empire, roads were built, one from Takshashila to Pataliputra and beyond. There can never be an exact match, but that’s more or less what GT Road (Grand Trunk Road) is. There can’t be an exact match again, but this is more or less the road Sher Shah Suri built/rebuilt. Strictly speaking, GT Road includes stretches within Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan too. I suspect few people read Kipling now, certainly not his poetry, and certainly not a poem like “Route Marchin’”. “We're marchin' on relief over Injia's sunny plains,/A little front o' Christmas-time an' just be'ind the Rains;/Ho! get away you bullock-man, you've 'eard the bugle blowed,/There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk Road;… Oh, there's them Injian temples to admire when you see,/There's the peacock round the corner an' the monkey up the tree,/An' there's that rummy silver grass a-wavin' in the wind,/An' the old Grand Trunk a-trailin' like a rifle-sling be'ind.” I thought old gazetteers would tell me how and when the road came to be called Grand Trunk Road. No luck.

National Highways are numbered differently now. “All East-West highways now have odd numbers, starting in the North and increasing in number towards the South. In other words, the greater the latitude the smaller the N-H number and vice-versa i.e. NH-1 in J&K and NH-87 in Tamil Nadu. Similarly, all North-South highways now have even numbers, starting in the East and increasing in number towards the West. In other words, the greater the longitude the smaller the NH number and vice-versa i.e. NH-2 in the North-East States of India and NH-68 in Rajasthan & Gujarat.” With this new numbering, GT Road should now be matched with NH-12 (Dalkhola to Bok-khali), parts of NH-27 (the Purnea-Patna stretch), NH-19 (Patna to Agra), parts of NH-44 (the Agra-Jalandhar stretch via New Delhi, Sonipat, Ambala and Ludhiana) and NH3 (the Jalandhar to Atari stretch). Of these, the most important link is NH-19. Under the old numbering system, this used to be NH-2. NH-19 is defined as “The highway starting from Delhi connecting Mathura, Agra, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Mohania, Aurangabad, Dobhi, Barhi, Bagadar, Gobindpur, Asansol, Palsit and terminating in Kolkata.” This is the Delhi-Kolkata road and all of NH-19 (not just Patna to Agra) can also be equated with GT Road.

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The author is chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. 

Views are personal.