History

By the 6th century BC, Taxila (Sanskrit: Takshashila) was already a major city and centre of learning within the Achaemenid empire’s easternmost satrapy of Gandhara. Ancient texts describe students travelling from across the Indian subcontinent to study here under individual master-teachers — not in a single institution but a network of homes and workshops that collectively constituted what later traditions called a university. Subjects included the Vedas, grammar, law, medicine, military science, astronomy and philosophy. The most celebrated alumni include Chanakya, who studied and later taught statecraft here before advising Chandragupta Maurya in founding the Maurya Empire; Panini, whose 4th-century BC grammar of Sanskrit remains one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the ancient world; and Jivaka, physician to the Buddha and to the kings of Magadha.

In 326 BC, Alexander the Great crossed the Indus and arrived at Taxila, which surrendered peacefully under its king Ambhi. After Alexander’s death, Bactrian Greek kingdoms controlled the region and rebuilt Taxila’s second city, Sirkap, as a planned Hellenistic grid — streets at right angles, a central acropolis, a marketplace, and the Temple of Jandial, whose architecture combines Ionic columns with what may be a Zoroastrian fire-altar arrangement. The fusion of Greek, Persian and Indian artistic traditions produced the Gandharan style — a Buddha with a Greek face, dressed in a toga — which spread from Taxila across Central Asia.

The Kushan empire (1st–5th century AD) built the third city, Sirsukh, whose massive stone defensive walls still stand in places 5 metres high. Buddhism flourished under Kushan patronage, and the surrounding hills filled with monasteries and stupas. Repeated White Hun raids from the 5th century AD accelerated decline, and by the 6th century the city was largely abandoned.