Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s2.t1.10

c9.s2.t1.10

Some sort of military activity in India and its borderland and even conquest of a well defined territory in this direction are attributed to Cyrus (558-529 B. C.), the founder of the Persian empire, by Xenophon and other writers. But the evidence points to the inclusion within the dominions of the first Achaemenid of only the Kabul valley as far as the Indus. We learn from Pliny that Cyrus destroyed the famous city of Kāpiśī and Arrian tells us that "the district west of the Indus as far as the Kophen (Kabul).. submitted to the Persians and paid tribute to Cyrus". Kāpiśī, the Ka-pi-shih of Hiuen Tsang and Ki-pin (cf. Greek Kophen) of other Chinese texts stood at or near the junction of the Ghorband and the Panjshir. The eastern part of the realm of Ki-pin comprised, according to later writers, K'ien-t'o-lo or Gandhāra. Classical writers thus make it clear that the region between the Panjshir and the Indus, embracing ancient Kāpiśī or Ki-pin and Gandhāra proper (Peshawar district), was under the sway of Cyrus, a fact that accords with the appearance of Gadara or Gandhāra among the subject peoples in the earliest epigraphs of Darius (522-486 B. C.).