Significance of Gandhara

The Gandhara civilisation dates back to Northern Pakistan and Afghanistan from the middle of the 1st millennium BC to the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD. The major powers who ruled over this area revered Buddhism as well as the Indo-Greek artistic tradition.

Gandhara was described for the first time by the Buddhist monk Hsüan-tsang which helped in identifying the remains found in this region during modern times as being of Gandharan origin. Well-known cities include Takshasila (Taxila), Purushapura (Peshawar) and Pushkalavati (Mardan).

Gandhara lay mainly to the west of the Indus River and was bounded on the north by the Hindukush Mountains. Gandhara proper included the Peshawar valley, the hills of Swat, Dir, Buner, and Bajaur. However, the bounds of greater Gandhara, i.e. regions where the cultural and political hegemony of Gandhara held sway, extended towards the Kabul Valley in Afghanistan and the Potohar plateau in the province of Punjab in Pakistan. There were times when the influence spread as far as Sindh where remains of a stupa (Buddhist place of worship and meditation) and a

Buddhist city are still visible, built over the even older remains of Mohenjodaro.

The most prominent theory about the name of Gandhara relates to the word Qand/Gand which means “fragrance”, and Har which means ‘lands’. Hence, Gandhara is the ‘Land of Fragrance’.

Gandhara was briefly part of the Persian Empire of Achaemenids. The Achaemenid hegemony in Gandhara lasted from the 6th century BC to 327 BC. Alexander, while conquering Persia, is said to have crossed through Gandhara to enter into Punjab and was offered alliance by the ruler of Taxila against his enemy, Raja Porus, who was a constant source of agitation for Taxila. This culminated in the famous battle against Porus at the Jhelum in 326 BC.

By 316 BC, King Chandragupta of Magadha, southern Bihar, (321-297 BC) moved in and conquered the Indus Valley, thereby annexing Gandhara and naming Taxila a provincial capital of his newly formed Mauryan Empire. Chandragupta was succeeded by his son Bindusara who was succeeded by his son Ashoka. Ashoka later converted to Buddhism and propagated the spread of this new religion by building monasteries and spreading the edicts of his ‘dharm’ across the subcontinent. One of these is the grand Dharmarajika monastery east of the river Tamra at Taxila.

In 184 BC, the Greeks invaded Gandhara under king Demetrius who built a new city. This new incarnation of Taxila is known now as Sirkap meaning ‘severed head’. The Kingdom of Demetrius consisted of Gandhara, Arachosia (Kandahar in Afghanistan), the Punjab, and a part of the Ganges Valley. It was a multi-ethnic society, where Greeks, Indians, Bactrians, and Western Iranians lived together. Evidence of this is found

all over 2nd-century BC Taxila, such as a Zoroastrian sanctuary at Jandial, directly north of Sirkap.

The gradual takeover of the Punjab by the nomadic Scythians of Central Asia began around 110 BC and they eventually took over Taxila. In the 1st century AD, the Iranian Parthians began taking over the Greek kingdoms in Gandhara and Punjab. Gondophares, a Parthian leader who lived at Taxila, is said to have been baptised by the apostle Thomas.

The Kushans became the next ruling elite; they were a tribe that migrated to Gandhara around the 1st century AD from Central Asia and Afghanistan. The tribe selected Peshawar as its seat of power and later expanded into the heartland of India to establish the Kushan Empire, which lasted until the 3rd century AD. In 80 AD, the Kushans wrested control of Gandhara from the Scytho-Parthians. The main city at Taxila was again re-established at another site and the new name Sirsukh given to it; it became a hub of Buddhist activity and hosted pilgrims from Central Asia and China. The Kushan era is the high point of Buddhist Gandhara art, architecture, and culture.

The tail end of the Kushan rule saw a succession of dynasties taking over control of the Gandhara region; the Persian Empire of Sassanids, Kidarites, and finally the White Huns led to daily religious, trade and social activity coming to a standstill. In 241 AD, the rulers of the area were defeated by the Sassanids of Persia and Gandhara was annexed to the Persian Empire again. However, the Sassanians could not directly rule the region and it fell to descendants of the Kushans, who came to be known as the Kidar Kushans. They carried on the traditions of their Kushan predecessors up to the middle of the 5th century AD when the White Huns invaded the region.

Since Buddhism and Gandhara culture was already ebbing, the invasion caused physical destruction and, due to the Huns’ adoption of the Shivite faith, the importance of Buddhism began to wane. During the White Hun invasions, the religious character of the region shifted gradually towards Hinduism and Buddhism was shunned in its favour, as it was deemed politically expedient by the White Hun who sought to make alliances with the Hindu Gupta Empire against the Sassanids. The change in the Buddhist character of the region led to a further decline of the Gandhara region.

Gandhara culture was forgotten for centuries. In the 19th century, British soldiers and administrators started taking an interest in the ancient history of the Indian subcontinent. In the 1830s, coins of the post-Ashoka period were discovered, and Chinese travelogues were translated.

With the Gandharan culture in Afghanistan unprotected for religious reasons, it is the task of Pakistan to uphold the Buddhist culture of Gandhara as a world heritage. Buddhism preceded Islam and the strong notion of equality of men in Buddhism was a reason why the former Buddhist population opened up to and converted to Islam when it entered the subcontinent.

Mr. Ikram Sehgal is a defence and security analyst and Dr. Bettina Robotka is a former Professor of South Asian Studies, humboldt University