Why it looks like this

Under Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka, Pataliputra governed most of the subcontinent; Greek envoys described a vast wooden-walled city along the river. Its remains lie beneath and beside modern Patna, surfacing at excavation sites among the neighbourhoods.

The Ganges wrote the modern shape: hemmed against the river's southern bank, Patna stretched into a band many kilometres long but only a few deep — old trading quarters like Patna City in the east, the colonial civil lines at the centre, and new districts running ever westward along the same riverside line.