Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c10.7

c10.7

But the Persian contribution to India did not end with iron and currency and Kharoshṭhī. These were the symbols of that new security which advancing imperial rule imposed along the highways, and of a new burgeoning of inter-regional trade. Local capitals which were also caravan-cities sprang up beside the main routes: probably Begram north of Kabul; certainly, as recent work has shown, Chārsada (Pushkalāvati or ‘Lotus City’) on the Peshāwar plain; and far-famed Taxila in the Punjab. These derelict and dusty sites are memorials to the *pax Persica* of the latter half of the 6th century B.C. And two centuries later, when Alexander the Great brought his travel-stained troops to the Indus, he came as the successor to the Great King of Persia, whose empire he had grasped. He came to claim the Achaemenid province of India; albeit that his curiosity ever marched ahead of him, and his horizon was a mirage. But in the long view what mattered to India was less the arrival of Alexander than the destruction of the Persian power. Under the Achaemenid emperors, the arts and crafts—particularly but not only those of architecture—had achieved resplendent distinction. With the burning of Persepolis in 330 B.C., two centuries of royal patronage came to an abrupt end. The accumulated artistry of Persia was out of work.