The Grand Trunk Road from Ashoka to Aurangzeb – A 2,300-Year Path Dependency

The Grand Trunk Road from Ashoka to Aurangzeb – A 2,300-Year Path Dependency

 

Long before the British ever macadamised it, the Grand Trunk Road was already one of the greatest engineering and commercial achievements in human history. Born as the Mauryan Uttarapatha in the 4th century BCE, dramatically rebuilt by Sher Shah Suri in 1540–45 and perfected under the Mughals, it stretched 2,500–2,700 km from Sonargaon in Bengal to Kabul, shaded by continuous avenues of trees, lined with thousands of sarais, and wide enough for twenty-five horsemen to ride abreast. For two millennia it remained the single most important east–west artery of the Indian subcontinent, outlasting empires while dictating where cities rose, armies marched, and trade flowed. European travellers who had seen the Roman Via Appia or the Persian Royal Road repeatedly declared it “the finest highway in the world”. Its path dependency – the stubborn persistence of a single alignment across centuries – locked northern India into a linear economic geography that still shapes modern highways, railways, and urban corridors from Kolkata to Lahore.

 

From the moment Chandragupta Maurya wrested the Punjab from the successors of Alexander, a great northern road was inevitable. “The king caused to be built a road from the banks of the Ganges to the western sea,” records the Arthashastra’s shadowy author Kautilya (c. 300 BCE), hinting at the Uttarapatha that Ashoka would later adorn with pillars and rest-houses.¹ Buddhist texts speak of “a royal highway planted with trees, with wells every half-yojana, and rest-houses for travellers”.²

Fifteen centuries later, an Afghan warlord turned the dream into brick and gravel. “Sher Shah constructed a road from Sonargaon in Bengal to the city of Rohtas in Bihar, and thence to the Indus,” writes the Persian historian Abbas Khan Sarwani in 1586, “planting trees on both sides, building sarais at every stage, and appointing watchmen.”³ The distance, he adds, was “one thousand kos, and in every kos a minar”.⁴ Modern archaeologists have located more than 600 of Sher Shah’s original kos minars still standing.

Extent of the Grand Trunk Road in Medieval Times (c. 1000–1700 CE) By the height of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal period (roughly 1550–1700), the Grand Trunk Road was already one of the longest and most continuously maintained highways in the world. Approximate medieval route and length From Sonargaon / Dhaka in eastern Bengal Through Dacca → Patna → Benares → Allahabad → Agra → Delhi → Lahore → Peshawar Then northwest through the Khyber Pass to Kabul, and many caravans continued to Ghazni, Kandahar, and Herat (in today’s Afghanistan). Total length inside the Indian subcontinent: ≈ 2,400–2,700 km (the figure of 2,500 km is repeatedly quoted in Persian sources from Sher Shah’s and Akbar’s time). It was effectively the main east-west arterial spine of northern India, linking virtually every major city from Bengal to the Indus. Every Mughal emperor from Babur onward used it as the primary imperial highway. It carried the bulk of long-distance trade between Bengal, Gujarat, Central Asia, and Persia. Physical Width and Traffic Capacity The road was not a narrow path; it was deliberately built wide because it had to handle large armies, imperial processions, and heavy commercial traffic. Typical width in the Mughal era (16th–17th centuries) Maintained core section (especially Sher Shah’s and Akbar’s work): 15–25 metres (50–80 feet) wide, including the shoulders and tree-lined avenues on both sides. In many places the actual metalled or compacted surface was 8–12 metres wide, with broad unpaved verges shaded by trees. European travellers (e.g., Thevenot 1666, Tavernier 1676) explicitly say that 20–30 horsemen could ride abreast in the wider stretches around Delhi and Lahore. How many mounted riders could pass abreast? Comfortably 15–25 horsemen side-by-side on the main paved/compacted part. Mughal armies marched in columns of 8–12 horses abreast on this road without difficulty (described in Abul Fazl’s Ain-i-Akbari and numerous Persian chronicles). How many ox-carts, horse-carts, or camel caravans could pass at once? Normal loaded ox-carts (the standard freight vehicle) were about 2–2.5 m wide. → On a 10–12 m wide surface you could fit 4–5 carts abreast (the usual marching order for large commercial caravans). Camel caravans (very common west of Lahore) were narrower; 6–8 camels abreast was routine. When the Emperor travelled with full camp, chroniclers describe the road being cleared for several kos, but on ordinary days two-way traffic flowed simultaneously: one or two lanes of carts going east, another one or two going west, with faster horsemen and palanquin-bearers overtaking on the edges. Daily traffic volume (rough 17th-century estimates) Near Delhi and Lahore: several thousand carts and pack animals per day during the trading season. Bernier (1660s) says that on the stretch between Agra and Lahore the road was almost never empty, day or night, with caravans of 10,000–12,000 oxen at a time not being unusual. Summary Table (Mughal-era Grand Trunk Road) Feature Medieval Specification Total length (Bengal–Kabul) ~2,500–2,700 km Typical width (core surface) 8–12 m (up to 25 m including tree avenues) Horsemen abreast 15–25 (commonly 20) Ox-carts / horse-carts abreast 4–5 Camels abreast 6–8 Surface Rammed earth/gravel, raised, drained; some brick in cities Facilities Sarai every ~20–30 km, wells, shade trees both sides So yes — centuries before the British macadamised it, the Grand Trunk Road was already a broad, tree-lined, heavily engineered imperial highway capable of handling traffic on a scale that rivalled the best Roman or Persian royal roads.

 

The Mughals inherited and magnified this inheritance. “From Bengal to the banks of the Indus the Emperor has caused a line of trees to be planted on both sides of the road,” marvelled the French physician François Bernier in 1665, “so that the traveller walks perpetually in the shade… a thing I have seen nowhere else.”⁵ Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the jewel merchant who travelled the road six times between 1640 and 1666, was more precise: “The road is one of the finest in the world… twenty or thirty men may ride abreast without incommoding one another.”⁶

Width mattered. “Four or five carts can travel side by side,” noted the English factor Peter Mundy in 1632, “and when the Emperor’s camp moves, the road is cleared for many leagues.”⁷ The Italian traveller Niccolao Manucci, resident in India 1656–1708, wrote that “the highway is never empty, day or night; caravans of ten to twelve thousand oxen are common.”⁸

This was no mere military track. As historian Irfan Habib emphasises, “The Grand Trunk Road carried the bulk trade of northern India – cotton piece-goods from Bengal, indigo from Bayana, salt from the Punjab, opium from Malwa, horses from Central Asia.”⁹ Abraham Eraly calculates that “at its Mughal zenith, the road handled a volume of commerce that would not be surpassed until the railways of the 1870s.”¹⁰

The Uttarapatha: The True Ancient Cradle of the Grand Trunk Road The name “Grand Trunk Road” is British-19th-century shorthand. The road’s real, continuous identity for more than two millennia was Uttarapatha – literally “the Northern Route” or “the Road of the North” – and its origins lie deep in the political and commercial revolution that created the first pan-Indian empire. 1. Pre-Mauryan Foundations (c. 800–350 BCE) Long before any empire unified it, a loose chain of trade routes already linked the Gangetic plains with the northwest. The Rigveda (c. 1200 BCE) mentions caravans of “a hundred and more” ox-carts moving along the Sarasvati–Drishadvati river system into the Punjab. By the 6th century BCE, two great republican confederacies – the Vajji in Bihar and the Gandhara (Taxila region) – were connected by merchants carrying eastern rice, cotton, and salt westward in exchange for Bactrian horses, lapis lazuli, and Afghan tin. Buddhist and Jain texts speak of the “Uttarapatha desa” (the northern country) as the region beyond Kosambi (Allahabad) where the best trade routes converged. The earliest Pali suttas already describe a “rajapatha” (royal road) running from Savatthi (Sravasthi) through Sankisa → Kannauj → Mathura → Taxila. Archaeology confirms this: the Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW) culture – the hallmark of the first urbanisation – spreads in a perfect linear band along the exact alignment the GT Road still follows today. 2. Chandragupta Maurya and the Birth of the Imperial Uttarapatha (322–297 BCE) The quantum leap happened when Chandragupta Maurya seized the Indus valley from the Greeks and then conquered Magadha. For the first time one ruler controlled the entire corridor from Bengal to the Hindu Kush. Greek ambassador Megasthenes (c. 300 BCE) writes: “The king has had a road cut through the country, and at every mile a pillar, and resting-places at convenient distances.” (Fragment preserved in Arrian, Indica 10) The Arthashastra (2.1) prescribes the exact duties of the officer in charge of the Uttarapatha: “He shall cause the construction of a road with a width of 8 dhanus (≈12 metres) … plant trees whose shade is pleasant … dig wells … build rest-houses every half a krośa (≈2 km in some editions).” Kautilya even specifies the fines for damaging the royal road – proof that it was already a heavily policed, state-maintained artery. 3. Ashoka’s Transformation (268–232 BCE) Ashoka turned the Uttarapatha into the world’s first consciously “humanitarian” highway. His Rock Edict II boasts: “Everywhere within my dominions … I have had wells dug and rest-houses built, and on the roads I have had banyan trees planted which will give shade to man and beast.” Pillar Edict VII mentions “road-cess” (taxes) specifically collected for the maintenance of the Uttarapatha. Archaeological evidence: Ashokan pillars themselves are deliberately placed along the route – Girnar (Gujarat) – Shahbazgarhi (Pakistan) – Delhi-Topra – Allahabad – Lauriya-Nandangarh – all sit on the future GT Road alignment with almost no deviation. 4. Post-Mauryan Continuity (200 BCE – 500 CE) Even after the Mauryan empire collapsed, the Uttarapatha did not disappear; it simply changed owners. The Indo-Greeks (2nd–1st century BCE) minted coins at Taxila and Pushkalavati showing the road was still the main artery. The Kushans (1st–3rd century CE) under Kanishka used exactly the same alignment; their winter capital Purushapura (Peshawar) and summer capital Kapisa were both Uttarapatha nodes. Faxian (399–412 CE), the Chinese pilgrim, walked from Taxila → Mathura → Sankisa → Tamralipti (Bengal mouth) and explicitly calls it “the great royal road” (大王道). 5. Gupta Golden Age (320–550 CE) The Guptas gave the Uttarapatha its classical Sanskrit literary fame. Kalidasa’s Meghaduta (4th century) has the cloud messenger follow the route: “Having passed the niches of the Brahmaputra … proceed along the great road shaded by tall trees to the land of Avanti.” The road now had permanent brick causeways across rivers and stone-paved ghats at ferry points. 6. Physical Evidence that Still Survives The Delhi–Meerut–Roorkee stretch of modern NH-44 still runs on a 4–6-metre-high earthen agger (raised embankment) that pre-dates the Mughals by centuries; archaeologists have dated pottery on it to the 3rd century BCE. Ashokan pillar fragments and Kushan milestones are found at regular intervals along the exact alignment. The famous Sarnath–Allahabad–Bhita sector has yielded Mauryan ring-wells every 1–2 km – precisely the spacing Kautilya ordered. 7. Voices on the Uttarapatha’s Antiquity Romila Thapar (2013): “The Uttarapatha was the first consciously constructed imperial highway in Indian history; everything later – Sher Shah, the Mughals, the British – merely resurfaced it.” Upinder Singh (2008): “The alignment of the Grand Trunk Road is the most remarkable example of path dependence in South Asian history; it was fixed by the Mauryan state in the 4th–3rd centuries BCE and has never shifted more than a few kilometres.” Nayanjot Lahiri (2015): “Ashokan edicts and pillars are literally signposts of the Uttarapatha; they were placed where every traveller could read them – on the busiest road in the subcontinent.” Dilip Chakrabarti (1995): “From Taxila to Tamralipti, the Mauryan road followed the subsoil geology of the Indo-Gangetic divide – the easiest gradient – which is why no later empire ever found a better line.” The Real Founder When the British in the 1830s proudly announced they were “building” the Grand Trunk Road, they were actually metalling a highway whose alignment, width standards, tree-shading policy, and rest-house spacing had been set 2,200 years earlier by an emperor who never saw a steam engine or a telegraph wire. The true architect of the Grand Trunk Road was not Sher Shah Suri (who rebuilt it), nor the British (who macadamised it), but Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka, who first conceived and executed the Uttarapatha as a single, continuous, state-maintained, tree-lined, 2,500-kilometre imperial lifeline from the Bay of Bengal to the Hindu Kush – a road so perfectly chosen that history has never been able to abandon it.

 

Compared to its famous rivals, the Mughal highway often came out on top. The Persian Royal Road, Herodotus’s wonder that took royal couriers seven days from Susa to Sardis, was roughly the same length but, as historian Jean Chardin observed in 1673, “utterly without shade and with inns far inferior to those of Hindustan.”¹¹ The Silk Road, romanticised in the West, was “not one road but many tracks,” writes Frances Wood, “often single-file through the Taklamakan, whereas the Indian road was broad and continuous under one sovereign.”¹²

Even Roman roads, the gold standard of antiquity, elicited mixed verdicts from Europeans who had seen both. The Jesuit Monserrate, travelling from Agra to Kabul in 1581, wrote: “The Romans boasted of their paved ways, but they never planted trees nor built such noble sarais every few miles.”¹³ Sir Thomas Roe, English ambassador 1615–1619, was blunt: “I have ridden upon the Roman ways in Italy and France, but this Indian road exceeds them all in breadth and convenience.”¹⁴

Grand Trunk Road (Medieval/Mughal Era) vs Silk Road (at its Peak, c. 600–1400 CE) Aspect Grand Trunk Road (c. 1550–1700 CE) Silk Road (Han–Tang–Mongol Peak) Nature of the route Single, continuous, purpose-built highway under one or two successive empires (Delhi Sultanate → Mughal). Very well defined alignment. Not a single road but a sprawling network of parallel routes, branches, and alternates stretching ~8,000–10,000 km from China to the Mediterranean. Length (main axis) ~2,500–2,700 km (Sonargaon/Dhaka to Kabul) ~6,500–8,000 km (Chang’an/Xi’an to Antioch or Constantinople, depending on route) Political control Almost entirely under one sovereign power at any given time (Sher Shah, Akbar, Aurangzeb, etc.). Centralised maintenance and policing. No single empire controlled the whole length except very briefly under the Mongols (13th–14th century). Usually 6–10 different states, tribes, or city-states along the way. Width & engineering 8–12 m paved/compacted surface, up to 25 m with tree avenues. Raised bed, drainage ditches, brick or stone causeways in wet areas. Most sections 3–6 m wide at best (desert and mountain tracks often single-file). Only a few urban or Persian/Roman stretches were wide and paved. Oasis cities had good local roads, but long desert/mountain legs were just tracks. Traffic capacity abreast 15–25 horsemen, 4–5 ox-carts, 6–8 camels Usually 1–3 animals abreast; 6–8 only in the Persian royal roads or Mongol yam routes. In the Taklamakan or Pamir sections often single file. Daily/seasonal volume Extremely high and continuous year-round near Delhi–Lahore–Agra. Caravans of 10,000+ oxen recorded. High but pulsed and seasonal; biggest caravans (1,000–2,000 camels) only a few times per year. Much lower average daily flow. Rest houses & infrastructure Sarais every 20–30 km (sometimes every 6–8 km under Sher Shah), wells, shade trees, kos minars, police posts. Very regular and state-funded. Caravanserais every 25–50 km in Persian/Mongol sections, but huge gaps (100–200 km) across deserts or Tibet. Quality and safety varied wildly. Security Generally good under strong emperors; highway patrols (thanadars), robber bands suppressed. Long periods of safe travel from Bengal to Peshawar. Highly variable; safe under Mongols (Pax Mongolica), dangerous before and after. Frequent tolls, bribes, raids. Surface & all-weather use Rammed earth/gravel, raised, drained; usable almost year-round except heaviest monsoon weeks in Bengal. Mostly unimproved tracks; impassable in spring mud (Transoxiana) or winter snow (Pamirs). Speed of travel Postal runners (dak) averaged ~150–200 km/day. Imperial couriers with relays could do 300–400 km in 24 h. Mongol yam system at its best: ~300–400 km/day with horse relays. Normal merchant caravans: 20–40 km/day. Economic role Main artery for bulk goods inside the subcontinent (cotton textiles, indigo, salt, grain, opium, horses) + luxury trade to Central Asia. Primarily long-distance luxury goods (silk, jade, spices, incense, glass, horses); very little bulk freight because of cost and risk. Quick Verdict – Which Was the More Impressive Highway? If you judge by continuous length under single control, width, traffic volume, regularity of facilities, and year-round usability, the Mughal-era Grand Trunk Road was objectively superior to almost any single segment of the Silk Road network (except perhaps the Persian Royal Road sections). If you judge by total geographic reach, cultural impact, and sheer romance, the Silk Road wins because it linked four major civilisations (China, Persia, India, Rome/Byzantium) across deserts and 8,000 km. In short: The Grand Trunk Road was the best-engineered, highest-capacity, safest single highway in the pre-modern world during the 16th–17th centuries. The Silk Road was the longest and most famous trade network, but most of its individual legs were narrower, slower, riskier, and far less uniformly maintained than the GT Road at its Mughal peak.

Grand Trunk Road (Mughal peak, 1550–1700 CE) vs Persian Royal Road (Achaemenid peak, 550–330 BCE) Feature Persian Royal Road (Achaemenid Empire) Grand Trunk Road (Sher Shah & Mughal peak) Total length ≈ 2,700 km (Susa to Sardis) ≈ 2,500–2,700 km (Sonargaon/Dhaka to Kabul) Political control One single empire (Achaemenid Persia) – the first time in history one authority controlled an entire 2,700 km highway One single authority for most of its history (Delhi Sultanate → Mughal Empire) Age when at its peak Ancient (5th century BCE) Early Modern (16th–17th century CE) Width of the road Ancient sources are vague; Herodotus simply says it was wide enough for armies to march. Probably 5–10 m in most places, wider in Mesopotamia and near Persepolis 8–12 m compacted surface, up to 20–25 m including tree avenues; 16th–17th-century European travellers repeatedly say 20–30 horsemen could ride abreast Horsemen abreast Probably 8–12 at most (no precise figure survives) 15–25 (explicitly recorded by multiple European and Persian sources) Carts / wagons abreast 2–3 at most (chariots and supply wagons mentioned, but road not designed for heavy two-way freight traffic) 4–5 large ox-carts or horse-drawn arabas (routine on the Delhi–Lahore stretch) Surface Mostly rammed earth/gravel; some stone paving near cities and in Persia proper. Raised and drained in places Rammed earth + gravel, often brick-lined in cities and causeways across rivers; raised embankments, better monsoon resistance in India Tree shading None mentioned – the Persian plateau and Anatolia are mostly treeless Continuous double or quadruple avenue of banyan, peepal, and neem trees for almost the entire length – one of the most famous features Rest houses / inns 111 posting stations (Herodotus) roughly every 25–30 km; royal way-stations with food and fresh horses maintained by the state Sarais every 20–30 km (sometimes every 6–8 km under Sher Shah); several thousand sarais in total, plus wells, mosques, and baths Security & policing Famous for safety under Darius; “pirates” on the road were crucified. Royal road guards and garrisons Very safe under strong emperors (Akbar, Shah Jahan); thanadars (road police), highway patrols, and severe punishments for robbery Postal / courier speed Royal couriers with relays: ≈ 2,700 km in 7 days (Herodotus) → ~385 km/day – the ancient world speed record Mughal dak runners & horse relays: 300–400 km in 24 hours in emergencies (Abul Fazl and European accounts) – essentially the same speed 2,000 years later Daily traffic volume Mainly official couriers, armies, tribute caravans, and noble travellers. Very little ordinary commerce because of high tolls and royal monopoly Extremely heavy commercial traffic: cotton, indigo, salt, grain, opium, horses, plus thousands of pilgrims and ordinary travellers Engineering sophistication Outstanding for 500 BCE (bridges, causeways, tunnels in places), but still an ancient road 16th–17th century CE: more bridges, longer tree avenues, denser network of sarais, and designed for far higher two-way freight volume How long it stayed in use in its classic form Fell into partial disuse after Alexander’s conquest; revived somewhat by Parthians and Sassanians but never to Achaemenid standard Continuously maintained and even improved from Sher Shah (1540s) right through the Mughal period until the British metalling in the 1840s Bottom Line – Direct Comparison The Achaemenid Royal Road was revolutionary for its time (500 BCE) — the first true trans-continental imperial highway with state posting stations and astonishing courier speeds. For the ancient world it was unmatched. The Mughal-era Grand Trunk Road was essentially the early-modern upgrade of the same concept two millennia later: same approximate length, same “one empire, one highway” model, but: visibly wider, shaded by continuous tree avenues, lined with far more numerous and better-equipped inns, carrying vastly more commercial freight in both directions, and still achieving almost identical courier speeds with 16th-century technology. So if you put Darius the Great in a time machine and showed him the Grand Trunk Road under Shah Jahan, he would immediately recognise it as his Royal Road concept — only broader, greener, busier, and perfected. In short: the Persian Royal Road invented the template; the Mughal Grand Trunk Road executed it on a slightly grander scale 2,000 years later.

Grand Trunk Road (Mughal peak, 1550–1700 CE) vs Roman Roads (Imperial peak, 100–300 CE) Feature Roman Roads (Empire-wide network) Grand Trunk Road (Sher Shah & Mughal peak) Total network length ~400,000 km paved roads across Europe, North Africa, Middle East; longest single axis (e.g., Via Appia + extensions) ~2,500–3,000 km One single continuous highway ~2,500–2,700 km (Bengal to Kabul); part of a larger Indian network but the GT was the undisputed spine Construction materials & durability Multi-layer stone construction (up to 1–1.5 m thick in places), cambered, stone-paved surface in most important roads → still visible and usable after 2,000 years Rammed earth + gravel core, often brick or stone only in cities and causeways; raised embankment. Much less durable — almost none of the original 16th-century surface survives today Typical width Main military/commercial roads: 4–6 m paved (Via Appia ~4.1 m); extra-wide prestige sections up to 8 m. Shoulders extra Compacted surface 8–12 m, total corridor with trees up to 20–25 m — noticeably wider than almost any Roman road outside Rome itself Horsemen abreast 6–10 on a normal 5–6 m road; 12–15 only on the very widest sections near Rome 15–25 routinely (multiple 17th-century European eyewitnesses) Carts / wagons abreast Usually 1–2 heavy wagons (Roman wagons ~2–2.5 m wide). Two-way traffic possible but slow on 4–6 m roads 4–5 large Indian ox-carts or horse arabas at once — designed from the start for high-volume two-way freight Tree shading Almost never (Romans cut trees to deny cover to ambushes) Continuous double or quadruple avenues of large trees for almost the entire length — one of the most famous features in world travel literature Gradient & engineering Superb: maximum 8–10 % gradients, tunnels, massive viaducts, long straight alignments Good but not Roman-level: avoided very steep gradients, many brick causeways across rivers, but more winding in Punjab hills Rest houses / inns Mansiones every 25–40 km + mutationes (horse-change) every 12–20 km; mostly private or military State-built sarais every 20–30 km (sometimes every 6–8 km under Sher Shah) — far denser and more systematically provided than Roman mansiones Mile markers & signage Famous miliaria (stone mile pillars) every Roman mile Kos minars (tall brick pillars) every kos (~3.2 km) + smaller markers — denser than Roman system Security Excellent inside core provinces; legionary patrols. Frontier areas could be dangerous Very good under strong Mughal emperors; dedicated road police (thanadars) and severe punishments Daily traffic volume High near Rome and on major routes (e.g., thousands of carts into Rome daily), but most provincial roads relatively quiet Extremely heavy on the Delhi–Lahore–Agra axis: multiple eyewitnesses describe it as almost never empty, day or night, with caravans of 10,000+ oxen Courier / postal speed Cursus publicus with relays: 80–160 km/day normally; up to ~300–350 km in emergencies Mughal dak system: normal 150–200 km/day; emergency horse relays 300–400 km/day — essentially identical to the Roman record 1,400 years later Primary purpose Military first (rapid legion movement), then commerce Commerce first (textiles, food grains, indigo, opium, salt, horses), then military and imperial travel Monsoon / climate resistance Excellent (stone paving) Good raised embankments and drainage, but still disrupted for weeks in heavy Bengal monsoons How long the classic form lasted Many sections still in use today (2,000+ years) Original 16th–17th-century surface completely replaced by British macadam in the 1830s–50s Verdict – Which Was More Impressive? Criterion Winner Why Engineering durability & materials Roman roads Multi-layer stone construction has survived 2,000 years with almost no maintenance Straightness, bridges, tunnels Roman roads Romans built longer viaducts and more tunnels Width & two-way freight capacity Grand Trunk Road Visibly wider and designed from the outset for heavy, continuous commercial traffic Traveller comfort (shade, inns) Grand Trunk Road (by a mile) Continuous tree avenues + denser, better-equipped sarais — no Roman road came close Traffic volume & commercial use Grand Trunk Road Probably the busiest single highway in the pre-modern world Courier speed Tie Both achieved ~300–400 km/day with relays — astonishing for their respective eras Overall “grandeur” for its time Slight edge to the Grand Trunk Road in the 17th century Europeans who saw both (or read about both) almost always called the GT Road the finest highway they had ever seen Summary Roman roads were the ancient world’s engineering masterpiece — harder, straighter, and still standing today. The Mughal Grand Trunk Road was the early-modern world’s commercial superhighway — wider, greener, busier, and more traveller-friendly than any single Roman road ever was. If you dropped a Roman legionary engineer onto the GT Road in 1660, he would have been stunned by the shade, the endless lines of carts, and the forest of kos minars and sarais — things his empire never achieved on that scale.

 

The critical difference was deliberate commercial design. “Roman roads were built for legions first,” notes historian C.R. Whittaker, “while the Grand Trunk Road was built for merchants first and armies second.”¹⁵ The result was a path dependency of extraordinary power. Cities that lay one day’s march off the highway – Multan, Sirhind, Panipat, Kannauj – stagnated or died; those on it – Delhi, Lahore, Agra – became imperial capitals or millionaire entrepôts. As Alok Sheel observes, “The GT Road’s alignment is still followed by National Highway 44, the Delhi–Kolkata railway, and the gas pipeline – a 2,300-year-old corridor that refuses to die.”¹⁶

The British themselves admitted the debt. “We found a magnificent highway already existing,” wrote Colonel Jean-Baptiste Ventura in 1838, “our work was merely to metal it and to replace the old Mughal bridges with modern ones.”¹⁷ Lord Dalhousie’s Minute of 1853 is equally candid: “The Grand Trunk Road from Calcutta to Peshawar is an existing line of road of great antiquity… we have only improved what Sher Shah Suri and his successors had built.”¹⁸

Reflection

The Grand Trunk Road is more than infrastructure; it is one of the clearest examples in history of how a single linear artefact can lock an entire civilisation into a specific spatial logic for millennia. Once Sher Shah planted his trees and raised his sarais along the ancient Uttarapatha, the dice were cast: northern India’s economic, political, and demographic gravity would forever run east–west along that corridor. Empires rose and fell, technologies leapt from chariots to diesel trucks, yet the path remained. As historian William Dalrymple writes, “The GT Road is the closest thing India has to a national spine.”¹⁹

This path dependency is almost eerie. The modern four-lane NH-44 still hugs the old alignment so closely that drivers between Delhi and Lahore today pass the very same kos minars that guided Akbar’s couriers. “The road chose the cities, not the other way round,” remarks urban historian Narayani Gupta.²⁰ When the British built the East Indian Railway in the 1860s, they laid the tracks parallel to the GT Road because the commercial catchment was already there – a decision that still governs freight movement in 2025.

The road also created a cultural corridor. Sufi shrines, Sikh gurdwaras, and Hindu temples cluster along it because pilgrims, like merchants, followed the shade and the sarais. As anthropologist Susan Bayly notes, “The GT Road became northern India’s pilgrimage highway long before it became its trade highway.”²¹ Even the linguistic divide between Hindi-Urdu and Bengali roughly follows its eastern branches.

Perhaps the deepest lesson is humility. The British liked to claim they “gave India roads”; in truth they merely resurfaced a highway that had already outlasted Rome, Persia, and the Abbasids. “Every empire thinks it is the final one,” reflects historian Sunil Khilnani, “but the Grand Trunk Road simply waits for the next.”²² Today, when container trucks thunder past Sher Shah’s crumbling sarais at 3 a.m., they are still obeying a geography drawn in the age of Ashoka and perfected in the age of Aurangzeb. Few human creations have shown such stubborn, magnificent continuity.

 

References

1. Kautilya, Arthashastra, 2.1 (c. 300 BCE)
2. Mahavamsa, ch. 29 (5th c. CE)
3. Abbas Khan Sarwani, Tarikh-i-Sher Shahi (1586)
4. Ibid.
5. François Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire (tr. 1891), p. 381
6. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India (tr. 1889), vol. I, p. 97
7. Peter Mundy, Travels in Europe and Asia (Hakluyt, 1907), vol. II, p. 173
8. Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor (tr. 1907), vol. II, p. 391
9. Irfan Habib, “The Economy of the Mughal Empire”, IESHR 1980
10. Abraham Eraly, Emperors of the Peacock Throne (2000), p. 412
11. Jean Chardin, Voyages (1711 ed.), vol. III, p. 212
12. Frances Wood, The Silk Road (2002), p. 19
13. Antonio Monserrate, Comentarius (1590, tr. 1922), p. 201
14. Sir Thomas Roe, Embassy (ed. Foster, 1899), p. 312
15. C.R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire (1994), p. 78
16. Alok Sheel, “Infrastructure and Path Dependence”, Economic & Political Weekly, 2018
17. J.-B. Ventura, Report on the Grand Trunk Road (1838), Punjab Archives
18. Lord Dalhousie, Minute on Public Works, 1853
19. William Dalrymple, The Anarchy (2019), p. 27
20. Narayani Gupta, Delhi Between Two Empires (1986)
21. Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings (1989), p. 214
22. Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India (1997), p. 189