A Guide to Taxila

Arrian speaks 'of it as being a great and flourishing city in the time of Alexander the Great the greatest indeed of all the cities which lay between the Indus and the Hydaspes (Jihlam).' Strabo tells us that the country round about was thitkly populated and extremely fertile as the !m►intains here begin to subside into the plains 3 and I'lutnrdi3 remarks on is richness of the soil. [...] To this end an inner line of fortifications appears to have been carried along the north side of the Akropolis as well as along the base of the northern ridge of Hathial the ply access to the interior fort being provided by a gateway in the depression betw pen the two hill?. [...] These are the Kunitla Stapa and monastery which stand on the northern ridge of Hathiäl partly covering the old city wall of Sirkap ; the stapas and monasteries at Mohr; Morädu and Jaulian in the same range of hills further to the east ; and those at Bidalpur Lalchak in the valley to the north. [...] From his accounts of other places in that part of India howeves it is evident that at the time of his pilgrimage the great Buddhist sanctuaries of the North-West were still relatively vigorous and flourishing ; and it is no fess evident from the condition in which they have been unearthed that the monuments of Taxila vi exe wantonly and ruthleity devastated in the course of the same Century. [...] namely : the Persians the Macedonians the Mairyas the Bactrian Greeks the Scythians (Sakas) the Parthians and the Kushans ; and it may be taken for granted that with the exception of the Macedonians whose conquest was merely transitory each of these nations in turn left some impress upon the arts and culture of the country.