The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) officials have discovered a 4km long and 20ft wide stone causeway built over Sone river in Bihar, which they say is a part of the Grand Trunk (GT) road built by Afghan ruler Sher Shah Suri.
"The ASI is currently mapping the GT road or Uttarpath, as it was known in the ancient times, across the country, and the causeway has been discovered during this exercise," a senior ASI official said. The project of tracing the Uttarpath is being headed by ASI DG Rakesh Tewari, who is currently out of India and was unavailable for comment.
According to historians, the Uttarpath was reconstructed during Sher Shah Suri's reign in the 16th century from present-day Afghanistan to Bangladesh and was renamed GT road by the Britishers in the 17th century. It was one of Asia's oldest and longest road and promoted trade and commerce in the southern and central parts of the continent.
The ASI official termed it one of the most important discoveries of recent times and added, "In fact, this is the first time that we have actually discovered an original part of the ancient or medieval GT road," he said.
Located between Kanbaheli in Aurangabad district and Bansa in Rohtas district, the discovered causeway (a raised road or track across a water body) is built out of 10ft long dressed sandstone slabs, and parts of it are still undamaged. "The structure and style indicate that the causeway was built in the medieval times. So far as we know, its last mention is found in Sir William Wilson Hunter's A Statistical Account of Bengal in 1876," another archaeologist said.
Officials attributed the discovery to heavy monsoon rains in Bihar and discharge of lakhs of cusecs of water on Sone river from the Indrapuri barrage that likely washed away the sand and silt deposits on the causeway and revealed its surface.
"The causeway is around one kilometre away (to the west) from the current alignment of the GT road, which may be because of the British slightly changing the alignments of the road in the late 1800s," he said.
