Tribes in Ancient India c77.154

c77.154

Peukelaotis represents Sanskrit Puṣkarāvatī which is mentioned in the *Bodhisattvāvadāna Kalpalatā* (32nd, p. 40). Puṣkalāvatī formed the western part of the old kingdom of Gandhāra. It lay on the road from Kabul to the Indus when Alexander invaded India. Arrian tells us that the Kabul falls into the Indus in the land called Peukelaotis. The people of the surrounding region are referred to sometimes as the ‘Astakenoi’ by classical historians. The reigning king at the time of Alexander’s invasion was Astes (Hasti or Aṣṭaka?) who was defeated and killed by Hephaestion, a general of Alexander. During the days of Aśoka, Puṣkarāvatī was the capital of Trans-Vindhyan Gandhāra. At a later age Indo-Greek kings of the house of Eukratides ruled for some time over Takṣaśilā, Puṣkarāvatī, Kāpiśa and Bactria.² Bhandarkar³ draws our attention to an interesting coin on which the term *nagara-devatā* occurs, indicating that it is a civic coin bearing the image or the symbol of the tutelary or presiding deity of the city. On the obverse is a goddess with the Kharosthī legend [*Pa*]Khalavadi-devada, which has been taken to mean the tutelary divinity of Puṣkalāvatī. Puṣkalāvatī was a Hindu city and yet we find that the goddess on this coin wears Greek dress and a mural crown which is the emblem of a Greek civic deity. Bhandarkar holds that we cannot regard it as a Greek deity because a Hindu divinity may appear in a Greek or Hellenic garb on Indo-Bactrian coins.