Patna
called also AZIMABAD, a city of Bengal, 140 miles E. of Benares, extends 9 miles along the Ganges. Apart from the Gola or government granary (1786), Patna College, the shrine of Shah Arzani, the mosque of Sher Shah, a Roman Catholic church, and a Mohammedan college, there are no buildings of moment. Its railway communication, and its central position at the junction of three great rivers, the Son, the Gandak, and the Ganges, avenues for the traffic of the northwest provinces, render Patna of great importance as a commercial center. The chief imports are cotton goods, oil-seeds, salt, sugar, wheat, and other cereals. The exports, principally oil seeds and salt, with cotton, spices, English piece goods, cocoanuts, and tobacco. Patna, under its early name of Pataliputra, is supposed to have been founded about 600 в. c. In modern times Patna is notable as the scene of a massacre of British prisoners by Mir Kasim in 1763, which led to war and annexation by the English, and for the mutiny at Dinapur, the military station of Patna, in 1857. Pop. (1918) 140,000.