Tribes in Ancient India c6.43

c6.43

Shi-shi-ch’eng, the Chinese name for Takṣaśilā, the Eastern capital of Gandhāra, means ‘severed head’. The legend goes that when the Buddha was a Bodhisattva in this city, he gave his head away in charity, and the city took its name from this circumstance.⁴ The city as described by Arrian was great, wealthy and populous. Strabo and Hsüan Tsang praise the fertility of its soil. Pliny calls it a famous city, and states that it was situated on a level where the hills sank down into the plains. About 80 years after Takṣaśilā’s submission to Alexander, it was taken by Aśoka; while by the early part of the second century B.C. it had become a province of the Graeco-Baktrian monarchy,—only to be conquered in 126 B.C.⁵ by the Indo-Scythian Sus or Abars, who retained it until it was taken from them by a different tribe of the same nationality, under Kaniṣka (c. 78 B.C.). About the middle of the first century A.D. it is said to have been visited by Apollonius of Tyana and his companion Damis, who described it as being about the size of Nineveh, walled like a Greek city, with narrow but well-arranged streets. Takṣaśilā must have been destroyed long before the Muhammadan invasion, for it is not mentioned by any Muhammadan author who has written upon India.¹