Tribes in Ancient India c6.52

c6.52

Takṣaśilā figures prominently in Buddhist and Jain stories. It was associated with Mahāvīra, the founder of Jainism⁵ (see *Heart of Jainism* by Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson, p. 80, f.n.), and with traditions regarding the Buddha. It is stated in the *Dīpavaṃsa* that a Kṣatriya prince named Dīpamkara, and his sons and grandsons governed their great kingdom in Takṣaśilā⁶ (Pāli Takkhasilā). In the *Dutiyapalāyi Jātaka* we find that King Gāndhāra (= the Gandhāran) of Takṣaśilā attacked and surrounded Benares with his four-fold army, and boasted that nobody would be able to defeat him. But the King of Benares said to him: ‘I shall destroy your army like mad elephants destroying a *nalavana* (bamboo grove)’. King Gāndhāra forthwith fled, terrified, to his own kingdom.¹ But we find the situation reversed in the Palāyi Jātaka: Brahmadatta, King of Benares, leads an army to Takṣaśīlā, but is so struck by the splendour of the city gate, which he mistakes for a palace, that he does not dare to make an attack on so mighty a king (the king being pictured as the Bodhisattva), and returns baffled to his own country.²