Gandhāra (kingdom)

Gandhāra
Gandhāra
c. 1200 BCE–c. 535 BCE
	Gandhāra among the Mahājanapadas in the Post Vedic period
Capital	Takṣaśila; Puṣkalāvatī
Common languages	Prakrits
Religion	Historical Vedic religion; Jainism; Buddhism
Demonym(s)	Gāndhārī
Government	Monarchy
• c. 700 BCE	Nagnajit
• c. 550 BCE	Pukkusāti
Historical era	Iron Age India
• Established	c. 1200 BCE
• Conquered by the Achaemenid Empire	c. 535 BCE
	Succeeded by
Gaⁿdāra; (Achaemenid Empire)
Today part of	Pakistan

Gandhāra (Sanskrit: गन्धार) was an ancient Indo-Aryan kingdom of northwestern Indian subcontinent whose existence is attested during the Iron Age. The inhabitants of Gandhāra were called the Gāndhārīs.

Location

The Gandhāra kingdom of the late Vedic period was located on both sides of the Indus river, and it corresponded to the modern Rawalpindi District of modern-day Pakistani Punjab and Peshawar District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.^[1]^[2] By the 6th century BCE, Gandhāra had expanded to include the valley of Kaśmīra.^[3]

The capitals of Gandhāra were Takṣaśila (Pāli: Takkasilā; Ancient Greek: Ταξιλα Taxila), and Puṣkalāvatī (Prākrit: Pukkalāoti; Ancient Greek: Πευκελαωτις Peukelaōtis) or Puṣkarāvatī (Pāli: Pokkharavatī).^[2]

History

Kingdom

The first mention of the Gandhārīs is attested once in the Ṛgveda as a tribe that has sheep with good wool. In the Atharvaveda, the Gandhārīs are mentioned alongside the Mūjavants, the Āṅgeyas. and the Māgadhīs in a hymn asking fever to leave the body of the sick man and instead go those aforementioned tribes. The tribes listed were the furthermost border tribes known to those in Madhyadeśa, the Āṅgeyas and Māgadhīs in the east, and the Mūjavants and Gandhārīs in the north.^[4]^[5]

The Gāndhārī king Nagnajit and his son Svarajit are mentioned in the Brāhmaṇas, according to which they received Brahmanic consecration, but their family's attitude towards ritual is mentioned negatively,^[2] with the royal family of Gandhāra during this period following non-Brahmanical religious traditions. According to the Jain Uttarādhyayana-sūtra, Nagnajit, or Naggaji, was a prominent king who had adopted Jainism and was comparable to Dvimukha of Pāñcāla, Nimi of Videha, Karakaṇḍu of Kaliṅga, and Bhīma of Vidarbha; Buddhist sources instead claim that he had achieved paccekabuddhayāna.^[3]^[6]^[7]

By the later Vedic period, the situation had changed, and the Gāndhārī capital of Takṣaśila had become an important centre of knowledge where the men of Madhya-deśa went to learn the three Vedas and the eighteen branches of knowledge, with the Kauśītaki Brāhmaṇa recording that brāhmaṇas went north to study. According to the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa and the Uddālaka Jātaka, the famous Vedic philosopher Uddālaka Āruṇi was among the famous students of Takṣaśila, and the Setaketu Jātaka claims that his son Śvetaketu also studied there. In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, Uddālaka Āruṇi himself favourably referred to Gāndhārī education to the Vaideha king Janaka.^[2]

During the 6th century BCE, Gandhāra was an important imperial power in north-west Iron Age South Asia, with the valley of Kaśmīra being part of the kingdom,^[3] while the other states of the Punjab region, such as the Kekayas, Madrakas, Uśīnaras, and Shivis being under Gāndhārī suzerainty. The Gāndhārī king Pukkusāti, who reigned around 550 BCE, engaged in expansionist ventures which brought him into conflict with the king Pradyota of the rising power of Avanti. Pukkusāti was successful in this struggle with Pradyota, but war broke out between him and the Pāṇḍava tribe located in the Punjab region, and who were threatened by his expansionist policy.^[6]^[8] Pukkusāti also engaged in friendly relations with the king Bimbisāra of Magadha.^[6]

Due to this important position, Buddhist texts listed the Gandhāra kingdom as one of the sixteen Mahājanapadas ("great realms") of Iron Age South Asia.^[9]^[10]

Conquest by Persia

By the later 6th century BCE, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus, soon after his conquests of Media, Lydia, and Babylonia, marched into Gandhara and annexed it into his empire.^[11] The scholar Kaikhosru Danjibuoy Sethna advanced that Cyrus had conquered only the trans-Indus borderlands around Peshawar which had belonged to Gandhāra while Pukkusāti remained a powerful king who maintained his rule over the rest of Gandhāra and the western Punjab.^[12]

However, according to the scholar Buddha Prakash, Pukkusāti might have acted as a bulwark against the expansion of the Persian Achaemenid Empire into north-west South Asia. This hypothesis posits that the army which Nearchus claimed Cyrus had lost in Gedrosia had in fact been defeated by Pukkusāti's Gāndhārī kingdom. Therefore, following Prakash's position, the Achaemenids would have been able to conquer Gandhāra only after a period of decline of Gandhāra after the reign of Pukkusāti combined the growth of Achaemenid power under the kings Cambyses II and Darius I.^[6] However, the presence of Gandhāra, referred to as Gaⁿdāra in Old Persian, among the list of Achaemenid provinces in Darius's Behistun Inscription confirms that his empire had inherited this region from conquests carried out earlier by Cyrus.^[11]

It is unknown whether Pukkusāti remained in power after the Achaemenid conquest as a Persian vassal or if he was replaced by a Persian satrap (governor),^[13] although Buddhist sources claim that he renounced his throne and became a monk after becoming a disciple of the Buddha.^[14] The annexation under Cyrus was limited to Gandhāra proper, after which the peoples of the Punjab region previously under Gāndhārī authority took advantage of the new power vacuum to form their own states.^[6]

References

^ Singh, Upinder. A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century. Pearson Education India. p. 264.
^ a b c d Raychaudhuri 1953, p. 59-62.
^ a b c Raychaudhuri 1953, p. 146-147.
^ Macdonell, Arthur Anthony; Keith, Arthur Berriedale (1912). Vedic Index of Names and Subjects. John Murray. pp. 218–219.
^ Chattopadhyaya, Sudhakar (1978). Reflections on the Tantras. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. p. 4.
^ a b c d e Prakash, Buddha (1951). "Poros". Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. 32 (1): 198–233. JSTOR 41784590. Retrieved 12 June 2022.
^ Macdonell & Keith 1912, p. 218-219, 432.
^ Jain, Kailash Chand (1972). Malwa Through the Ages. Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 98–104. ISBN 978-8-120-80824-9.
^ Higham, Charles (2014), Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations, Infobase Publishing, pp. 209–, ISBN 978-1-4381-0996-1, archived from the original on 31 March 2022, retrieved 24 June 2022
^ Khoinaijam Rita Devi (1 January 2007). History of ancient India: on the basis of Buddhist literature. Akansha Publishing House. ISBN 978-81-8370-086-3. Archived from the original on 24 June 2022. Retrieved 24 June 2022.
^ a b Young, T. Cuyler (1988). "The early history of the Medes and the Persians and the Achaemenid empire to the death of Cambyses". In Boardman, John; Hammond, N. G. L.; Lewis, D. M.; Ostwald, M. (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–52. ISBN 978-0-521-22804-6.
^ Sethna, Kaikhosru Danjibuoy (2000). "To Pāṇini's Time from Pāṇini's Place". Problems of Ancient India. Aditya Prakashan. pp. 121–172. ISBN 978-8-177-42026-5.
^ Bivar, A. D. H. (1988). "The Indus Lands". In Boardman, John; Hammond, N. G. L.; Lewis, D. M.; Ostwald, M. (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 194–210. ISBN 978-0-521-22804-6.
^ "Pukkusāti". www.palikanon.com. Archived from the original on 24 June 2022. Retrieved 26 July 2020.