The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c12.59

c12.59

¹ The other great seat of learning, according to the Jātakas, was Benares, which seems to have derived its system of education from Taxila. Jīvaka, the court physician of Bimbisāra and Ajātasatru, took a seven-years' course at Taxila. The name is given by the Greek and Roman authors as Taxila (Τάξιλα), which is a close transcription of the Pāli or Prākrit Takkasilā. The Sanskrit form is Takshaśīla. The remains, which have now been carefully surveyed and described by Sir John Marshall (*A Guide to Taxila*, Calcutta, 1918), include those of three distinct cities, namely, Bhīṛ—Maurya and pre-Maurya; Sir Kap—Indo-Greek, Parthian, and Kadphises I; and Sir Sukh—of the time of Kanishka. The stratification proves conclusively both that Kanishka was later than the Parthian and Kadphises kings, and that he lived in the first or second century after Christ. There are also a large number of detached monuments which, with the exception of two stūpas that are probably Jain, are chiefly Buddhist stūpas and monasteries; but the vestiges of many pre-Buddhist edifices probably remain underground. The Buddhist establishments were in a state of decay when the Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsang visited them in the seventh century (Beal, i, 136–43; Watters, i, 240), and the kingdom was then tributary to Kashmir. The Jātaka stories are full of references to the fame of Taxila as a university town, e. g. vol. ii (Rouse's transl.), 2, 32, 59, &c. The Susīma Jātaka places it in the kingdom of Gandhāra, i. e. of Peukelaotis and Peshāwar. Most of the Jātakas probably are anterior to Alexander's time. The romantic history of Apollonius of Tyana, by Philostratus, gives many details about Taxila in the first century of the Christian era, which would be extremely interesting if confidence could be felt in the truth of the alleged facts (Phillimore's transl., Oxford, 1912, Bk. II, chap. 20–42). Prof. Flinders Petrie believes in the reality of the Indian journey of Apollonius and dates it in A. D. 43–4 (*Personal Religion in Egypt*, 1909, p. 141). Sir. *J. Marshall* also holds this view, as he has found in his own discoveries remarkably strong corroboration of some of the details given by Philostratus (*Guide to Taxila*, 1918, pp. 15, 91). See also Conybeare's transl. of Philostratus, *Life of Apollonius*, New York, 1912.