Fwd: GANDHARA in Encyclopaedia Iranica

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From Encyclopaedia Iranica

 

WILLEM VOGELSANG by

 

GANDHARA (OP. Gandara), a province of the Persian empire under the

Achaemenids. The name of Gandhara or Gandhar occurs in ancient

Indian texts as the name of a people, obviously the inhabitants of

Gandhara, a district traditionally placed in the extreme northwest

of the Indian subcontinent. It was located along both banks of the

Indus, around the famous cities of Takshashila (Taxila) and

Pushkalavati (modern Charsada, northeast of Peshawar).

 

 

The name Gandhari first occurs in the Rigveda (I, 126,7; late 2nd

millennium B.C.E.) in the phrase Gandharinam avika (ewe of the

Gandharans), and also in the somewhat later Atharva Veda. The name

is used, around 400 B.C.E., by the Indian grammarian Panini (Monier-

Williams, pp. 346, 353), who himself probably hailed from Gandhara

and who listed the land as one of the major provinces of India. The

name of Gandhara was still used in the 11th century C.E. by Abu

Rayhan Biruni (q.v.), who referred to Wayhend (I, p. 206) as the

capital of Kandhara (a place probably to be identified with Und near

Attock).

 

 

The earliest reference to Gandara in Iranian sources occurs in the

Old Persian version of the Bisotun text of the Achaemenid Darius I

(in ca. 520 B.C.E.). In this text the land is listed as one of

the " countries " (dahyus, q.v.) in the Persian empire (DB 1.16;

Herodotus 3.91). In the Akkadian and Elamite versions of the same

text, the name of Gandara is replaced by that of the Paropamisadae

(Akk.: pa-ar-u‚-pa-ra-e-sa-an-na; Elam.: [par-ru-ba-ra-e]-sa-na).

The latter name is also found in later classical sources and was

used to denote the foothills south of the Hindu Kush watershed, near

ancient Capisa and the modern city of Kabul. The name of the

Paropamisadae can be given an Iranian etymology, " (the land) beyond

(the land) above the eagle/falcon, " and would thus indicate an

appellation given to the country by (Iranian) people living to the

north of the Hindu Kush, namely in or near ancient Bactria (q.v.).

The etymology of the Old Persian name of Gandara is still in doubt,

although it has a clearly Indian background. It is likely that in

antiquity the people of Gandhara were mainly Indian, as may be

deduced from the fact that Indian languages (Pashai) are still being

spoken in isolated valleys north and east of modern Kabul. Another

indication of the ethnic background of the people of Gandhara in

antiquity are the Achaemenid reliefs at Persepolis, where delegates

from Gandara /Gandhara are depicted with bare torso and wearing

loincloths.

 

Gandhara has become widely known as the center of the so-called

Gandhara Art, which flourished in the early first millennium C.E.

This art is characterized by strong influence from the Hellenistic

and Roman West.

 

The geographical position of Gandhara as the ancient gateway to

India is not only indicated by the Gandhara Art, but also by much

earlier finds. In particular it is linked to the so-called Gandhara

Grave Culture, which flourished between ca. 1500 and 500 B.C.E. in

this area. Relevant finds have been found along the banks of the

Swat and Dir rivers to the north, Taxila to the southeast, and the

land along the Gomal river to the south. The Gandhara Grave Culture

shows unmistakable links with finds from South Central Asia and the

Iranian Plateau, also dating to the second and first millennia B.C.E.

 

 

Bibliography: V. S. Agrawala, India as Known to Panini: A Study of

the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi, Lucknow, 1953; 2nd revised

ed., Varanasi, 1963. Abu Rayh?an Biruni, Ketab tah?qiq ma le'l-Hend

men maqula maqbula fi'l-¿aql aw mard?ula, tr. E. C. Sachau as

Albiruni's India, 2 vols., London, 1910. C. S. Antonini and G.

Stacul, The Proto-Historic Graveyards of Swat (Pakistan), Rome,

1972. M. Bussagli, L'arte del Gandhara, Turin, 1984. J. M.

Cook, " The Rise of the Achaemenids and Establishment of Their

Empire, " in Camb. Hist. Iran II, p. 200-291. K. Deambi, History and

Culture of Ancient Gandhara and the Western Himalayas from Sarada

and Epigraphic Sources, New Delhi, 1985. J. Goswami, Cultural

History of Ancient India, Delhi, 1979. N. S. Gupta, Cultural History

of Kapisa and Gandhara, Delhi, 1984. A. Hermann, " Paropamisadai, " in

Pauly-Wissowa, XVIII/4, col. 1778. E. Herzfeld, The Persian Empire:

Studies on Geography and Ethnography of the Ancient Near East, ed.

G. Walser, Wiesbaden, 1968, pp. 279, 293-94, 336-38, 345. W.

Kiessling, " Gandaritis, " in Pauly-Wissowa, VII/1, cols. 696-701. M.

Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Oxford, 1899. B.

Rowland, The Art and Architecture of India: Buddist-Hindu-Jain,

Harmondsworth, U.K., 1953; 3rd, revised ed., Harmondsworth, U.K.,

1963. F. Tissot, Gandhara, Paris, 1985. W. J. Vogelsang, The Rise

and Organisation of the Achaemenid Empire: The Eastern Iranian

Evidence, Leiden, 1992. Idem, " Acculturation in Ancient Gandhara, "

South Asian Studies 4, 1988, pp. 103-13. M. Witzel, " Early Eastern

Iran and the Atharva Veda, " Persica 9, 1980, pp. 86-128.

 

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