Gandhāra (kingdom)

This article is about the Iron Age kingdom proper. For the historical region, see Gandhara. For the mythological kingdom in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, see Gandhara Kingdom.

Gandhāra (Sanskrit: Gandhāra; Pali: Gandhāra) 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.

Gandhāra
c. 700 BCE–c. 518 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. 6th/5th cent. BCE	Pukkusāti
Historical era	Iron Age India
• Established	c. 700 BCE
• Conquered by the Achaemenid Empire	c. 518 BCE
Succeeded by Gaⁿdāra (Achaemenid Empire)
Today part of	Pakistan

Location

Location of the Gāndhārīs the Vedic tribes

Location of Gandhāra during the late Vedic period

Location of Gandhāra during the post-Vedic period

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 (Prakrit languages: Pukkalāoti; Ancient Greek: Πευκελαωτις, romanized: Peukelaōtis) or Puṣkarāvatī (Pali: Pokkharavatī).^[2]

History

Religious Mythology of the Kingdom

The first mention of the Gandhārīs is attested once in the religious text 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 another religious text, 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]

History of the Kingdom

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. According to Buddhist narratives written a few centuries later, the Gāndhārī king Pukkusāti, 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

Main articles: Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley and Gandāra

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]

Assuming that Pukkusāti lived during the 6th century BCE, is unknown whether he 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]

However, there are no historical facts known for certain about Pukkusāti, and all theories about his reign are speculative. It is debated whether he ruled before or after the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley, and is unknown what kind of relationship he historically had with the Persian Achaemenid rulers.^[15] With alternative chronologies which date the Buddha's lifetime (and his contemporary kings) as much as a century later, it is alternatively possible that Pukkusāti in fact lived as much as a century after the Achaemenid conquest. Among scholars who favour the latter chronology, it remains an open question for debate, what kind of relationship Pukkusāti historically had with the Persian Achaemenid rulers. Possible theories are: he "may belong to a period when the Achaemenids had already lost their hold over Indian provinces," or he may have been holding power in eastern parts of Gandhara such as Taxila (speculatively considered by some scholars to be outside the Achaemenid dominions), or may have been serving as a vassal of the Achaemenids but with autonomy to conduct warfare and diplomacy with independent Indian states, similar to the "active and often independent role the western satraps had in Greek politics".^[15] Thus it is considered that he may have been an important intermediary for cultural influence between Ancient Persia and India.^[15]

Rulers

• Nagnajit
• Shakuni
• Subala
• Achala
• Kalikeya
• Suvala
• Vrishaka
• Vrihadvala
• Gaya
• Gavaksha
• Vrishava
• Charmavat
• Arjava
• Suka
• Kulinda
• Pushkarasarin

See also

• Sindhu-Sauvīra
• Gandhara
• Janapada
• Mahajanapada
• Gandhara Kingdom
• Gandhara grave culture