Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c9.s4.95

c9.s4.95

The *vishaya* (territory) described in these lines must have embraced the Rāwalpindi district of the Western Pañjāb and the Peshāwar district of the North-West Frontier Province. A few miles to the north-west of Rāwalpindi and 2,000 leagues away from Banaras,⁴ stood the famous city of Takshaśilā or Taxila. The remains of the great city “are situated immediately to the east and north-east of Sarai-kala, a junction on the railway, twenty miles north-west of Rāwalpindī. The valley in which they lie is watered by the Haro river. Within this valley and within three and a half miles of each other are the remains of three distinct cities. The southernmost (and oldest) of these occupies an elevated plateau, known locally as Bhir-mound.”¹