Forum Pakistan

1. A historico-cultural area in the northwest of modemday Pakistan, in the lower reaches of the river *Kabul. The name probably derives from the Gandhari tribe mentioned in Rigveda. At the end of the 6th century BC, Gandhara was a satrapy of the Persian state of the * Achaemenids,

2. The Gandhara state is mentioned in Buddhist sources as one of the sixteen great states of ancient India, existing in the 6th century BC. Mention of Gandhara also occurs in the Puranas, among the Janapads (states), with its centre in Pushkalavati (present-day Charsadda). According to the Buddhist tradition, as far back as the 6th century BC, Gandhara was an independent state with its capital at *Taxila. The Gandharan King Pukusati was a contemporary of the Magadha ruler Bimbisara and of Buddha. Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the Maurya dynasty, whose capital was at Magadha, is said to have been a native of Taxila in Gandhara. According to the fifth Asokan inscription, in the 3rd century BC Gandhara was an eminent part of the Mauryan empire. From here the Buddhist missions to Central and East Asia are said to have gone out. In the 2nd century BC, under King Menander, Gandhara found itself included in the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom. In the middle of the l st century BC it was acceded by one of the Indo-Sakan states, and by the end of the I st century sc/early l st century AD, it was joined to the IndoParthian Kingdom. In the 1 st to 3rd centuries AD Gandhara was in the vassalage of the Kushan Empire. Buddhism came to Gandhara early. Many Buddhist relics of the past, such as Buddhist sculpture visibly influenced by Hellenism including one of the earliest representations of Buddha, have been preserved in Gandhara.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: WW Tarn, 'The Greeks in Baktria and India', Cambridge, 1951 •. A.K. Narain, 'The Indo-Greeks', Oxford, 1957.