Buddhism is 5000 years old!
10 June 2017
On or about 5 June 2017, a tweet appeared with an image of Pattan Minara near Rahim Yar Khan. The tweeter, one fool named Shiraz Hassan, wrote that it was a Buddhist temple and that it was believed to be five thousand years old! And this man claims to be a BBC correspondent! So, if this is BBC, I refuse to ever watch their television, listen to their radio or read their web pages.
Below is the lowdown on Pattan Minara. But first of all on Buddhism.
The great Buddha lived in the 6th century BCE, that is, just two thousand five hundred years ago. Buddhism dates from that time. One would have to be an utter idiot completely ignorant of an historical timeline to believe that Buddhism dates back to the 6th millennium.
This brings to mind one item from about twenty-five years ago. At the end of a season of work at Harappa, archaeologist Mark Kenoyer did a lecture at the Lahore Museum. Among other things, he pointed out the halo-like disc behind the head of a presumably holy figure and likened it to the ones we see on stone depictions of Buddha. The report in The News the following morning detailed the discussion and ended it by telling its readers that the people of Harappa were Buddhists!
Read more »Labels: Buddhism, Heritage, History, Taxila
posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:58,
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Philosophers of Taxila
20 May 2017
Read in Urdu about Philosophers of Taxila who astounded Alexander with their wisdom [double click the image below to enlarge and read].
Read more »
Labels: Alexander, History, Taxila, Urdu
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:10,
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Ancient history of Taxila
01 April 2017
Read in Urdu about history of Taxila - seat of ancient civilization. This article appeared in newspaper Roznama Pakistan [double click the image below to enlarge].
Read more »Labels: Alexander, History, Taxila, Urdu
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Prince Kunal
09 September 2015
It is from a far-off time indeed that the name of prince Kunal shines through to us: from about the middle of the third century BCE. That was when we hear of an uprising in Taxila. Taking his eldest son to be a man of good sense and perspicacity, Asoka, who ruled the vast Indian kingdom from distant Patliputra (Patna, Bihar), sent out the prince to quell the disorder. Sources such as the seventh century Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang confirm that the prince was indeed celebrated across the kingdom for his great compassion, piety and humility.
The order for prince Kunal was to use his gumption to quell the rebellion. In case Asoka needed to send specific orders, they would be in a sealed envelope. And the seal, so said the king, would be the mark of his teeth, a copy of which he handed over to the prince to preclude any chance of forgery.
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| A view of the Kunal monastery |
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Motorcycle Diaries, July 2015
13 July 2015
PIA did it again. There is an insidious design within the national airline to force a collapse. Alternatively, the plan is to make it continue to live on governmental largesse in the shape of huge injections of funds with the aim of ultimately making the airline die an unnatural death.
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| Hazara landscape |
Back in September 2010, I needed to fly to Chitral. Now, September is off-season for tourists and planes fly in and out virtually empty. But the Edgerton Road PIA office informed me that no seats were to be had until the end of October. That meant my deadline would be missed. In desperation I turned to the only very powerful friend I had and someone I could always rely upon. General Khalid Shameem Wynne was then Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and to him did I turn.
Read more »Labels: Alexander, Motorcycle Diaries, Northern Pakistan, Taxila
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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In the throne room of Gondophares
13 April 2015
One day in the long ago year of 44 of the Common Era (AD, as it was once called), Apollonius, the Greek philosopher, and his friends walked up the broad, tree-lined main street of Taxila (of the ruins now called Sirkap). Among his retinue, Apollonius had Damis, a native of Nineveh (Mesopotamia), a brilliant linguist and diarist. Damis recorded everything he saw in the company of the philosopher and it is because of him that we know what transpired in the city in that long ago age.
They had entered Taxila from the main gate in the north and worked their way up the main street. En route they paused at the temples and the several stores they passed. Apollonius now neared the palace of the king for he had been granted the audience he had sought. It must be remembered that only two decades before Apollonius' visit, Taxila had changed hands between the Scythians and their distant cousins the Parthians. And now the city and indeed most of Punjab was under the sway of Gondophares, the Parthian.
Read more »Labels: History, Punjab, Taxila
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Oh, Taxila
11 March 2015
As Alexander of Macedonia came slowly down the massive headland whose name he pronounced Aornos and which was known to Pukhtun ancestors as Una Sar (today more famous by the name of Pir Sar, its smaller satellite), he was looking forward to the much-awaited R&R in Taxila. The thought of possessing Taxila, 'the largest [city] between the Indus and the Hydaspes (Jhelum)', through conflict was the farthest from Alexander's mind because Ambhi (Omphis for the Greeks), the king of Taxila, had already made peace with him.
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To the educated upper classes, Taxila was known as Taksha Sila, while in the vernacular it was Takha Sila which was the name that went into the Greek as Taxila. Now because Sila is rock or stone in Sanskrit, it is believed that Taksha Sila or Rock of the Takkas was so named after a local tribe. Conversely, others believe the name to have meant 'Hewn Rock' from the amount of cut stone that was the construction material for Taxila buildings. Yet another theory is that the name comes from Takshaka, the serpent king of ancient legend.
Read more »
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Naked philosophers of Taxila
22 September 2014
To these philosophers he sent Onesicritos, the sailor from the island of Cos, so that he may learn of the philosophy of the Punjabi sages. It was a scorching hot midmorning in early May as Onesicritos and his entourage of guards and interpreters made their way out of Taxila city, past the university (where the museum now stands) and across the azure, winding line of the Tamrah rivulet. Where wheat fields gave way to meadow and forest, where the pipal and the banyan grew tall and thick, these savants lived subsisting on the produce of the forest and drinking only water.
Read more »Labels: Alexander, History, Punjab, Taxila
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Taxila Cross
05 July 2014
In Lahore Cathedral, there hangs on the wall, at the upper end of the nave in the recess to the right, a small cross in a glass frame. The inscription below records that it was found in 1935 and donated to the church by Mrs Cuthbert King (Mr King then being the Deputy Commissioner at Rawalpindi). Nothing surprising about a cross in a church, except that this particular relic goes by the name of the Taxila Cross. Because it was found just outside the fortification wall of Sirkap (one of the ruined cities of Taxila), it is taken by believers as a sign of the arrival of Christianity in our part of the world at the time that Sirkap lived.
This cross would never have come to be celebrated if a manuscript titled The Acts of Saint Thomas (an apostle of Jesus) had not been discovered in distant Syria back in 1822. This document narrates how the apostle arrived by sea in the capital city of King Gondophares in order to impress the pagan king with the gospel. But instead of lending an ear, the king lent the apostle some money and told him to build a royal palace for him. Now, St Thomas, being a man of god, squandered the money in alms. When the king inquired about progress, the apostle said that his alms giving had built a royal residence for the king in heaven.
Read more »
posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:00,
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The fall of Taxila
22 June 2014
Beginning with the annexation of Taxila to the kingdom of Alexander, there began a three hundred year-long period of Taxilan Hellenisation save of course the century-long hiatus of the Mauryan period. The successors of Alexander's general Seleucus Nikator annexed Afghanistan and Taxila together with most of modern Pakistan.
A hundred and fifty years later, they were overthrown by the pale-skinned Scythians (Saka to the Indians). These horse-riding warriors so overwhelmed our part of the world that Sindh became Saka Dvipa Island of the Sakas for the people of India and Indo-Scythia for the distant Greeks.
Read more »Labels: History, Punjab, Taxila
posted by Salman Rashid @ 10:49,
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On KAY2 TV
01 March 2014
Part 2 of the discussion program Shandar Chowk on KAY2 TV today (Saturday, Mar 1, 2014) at 6.30 PM (PST). Discussing will focus on Taxila (also Jhelum, Alexander the Great, Raja Paurva).
Related: Part 1
Labels: Alexander, Documentary, History, jhelum: City of the Vitasta, Taxila, Urdu
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Taxilian Minds
01 December 2013
Defeated in his attempt to conquer India by Chandragupta Maurya, Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander’s successors, made peace and exchanged embassies with the Mauryan. And so, in the year 300 BC, Megasthenes came to India as the ambassador from the Greek court in Syria. He remained here a full fifteen years, travelled across the length and breadth of India and went home to write his Indica which survives to this day, albeit in fragments.
His book is a collection of tales wondrous as well as items of real history. One among the latter is the story of the philosophers of Taxila. Now, Megasthenes was in Taxila, a mere twenty-five years after Alexander’s departure while those who had witnessed the passage of the westerners were still alive and talking of the event. Consequently, the items concerning this city in the Indica can largely be relied upon for their veracity.
Read more »Labels: Alexander, Books, History, Punjab, Research, Taxila
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Takshasila: Rock of the Takkas
28 October 2013
'The Gymnosophists' fame had spread far beyond their town by the Murree hills, and all because a pupil of Aristotle had crossed the Hindu Kush in search of the eastern Ocean and a pupil of Diogenes had left the boats on his native island of Cos, joined the expedition and agreed, in India, to go out in the midday sun.' Thus writes Robin Lane Fox on the subject of the naked philosophers of Taxila in Alexander the Great, his definitive work on the life and times of the greatest Macedonian ever to have lived.
Indeed, the name of the rich and flourishing city of Taxila was frequently mentioned in the streets of distant Babylon and Athens in the latter years of the 4th century BC. The fact that the information was by and large accurate was entirely due to Alexander the Great, that most illustrious of Aristotle's pupils; although the Macedonian's secretaries and diarists certainly were not the first Westerners to have written about the trans-Sindhu territories. In the year 512 BC, the Greek admiral Scylax sailed down the Sindhu on a mission of reconnaissance on behalf of Darius Hystaspes, the Achaemenian king of Persia. Soon afterwards Darius annexed Gandhara, Sindh and parts of the Punjab. Herodotus, the Father of History (born 484 BC), tells us that Indian tribute to the Persian court was gold dug from some 'sandy desert' in the vicinity of the city of Caspatyrus (identified as Peshawar), by the fabulous 'gold digging ants'.
Read more »Labels: Alexander, Books, History, Research, Taxila
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Travelling Back in Time
09 July 2013
If I could travel back in time to a particular place, I have one clear choice: Taxila in the late 4th century BCE. Now, this would be at or immediately after the passage of Alexander the Macedonia. This choice is not to have been able to see the all-conquering Alexander. It is a wish to know and live in a virtual Utopia.
Taxila, so the Greeks who were in Alexander’s train tell us, was a city of high culture and learning. Here the streets were sometimes roamed by the philosophers who wore only a loincloth and lived outside where farmland gave way to forest. They came into town and I would have liked to have been there to hear their Stoic views on life – views that they abide by with rigid exactitude. Though they followed a thinking very similar to that of Diogenes, they nevertheless valued life and did not endorse destroying it or persecuting another simply for adhering to a differing way of life. And how could they?
Labels: History, Punjab, Taxila, The Salt Range and the Potohar Plateau, Travel
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Bhamala: the hidden monastery
07 April 2013
As the city of Taxila expanded over the centuries, there grew around it like appendages a number of religious institutions. Buddhism being the predominant religion in the heyday of this great city, these establishments were all monasteries of that religion. The better known among these are Jaulian, Mohra Moradu and Dharmarajika. There are others in the same area that are lesser known. Of these surely the most enchanting and the least known or visited is the Bhamala monastery.
Situated on an elongated hill above the right bank of the Haro River where the valley is only a couple of hundred metres wide, Bhamala is as secluded as it can get. On three sides the hills loom high, only to the southwest is the view open where the narrow valley looks into what was once a large depression containing a few villages but now lies submerged under the placid blue waters of Khanpur Dam.
Read more »Labels: Book of Days 2010, Punjab, Sights Less Seen, Taxila
posted by Salman Rashid @ 12:37,
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St Thomas in Taxila
10 March 2013
Among its proudest displays, the Cathedral of Lahore exhibits a small cross in a glass case. Known as the Taxila Cross, it was found in 1935 just outside the ruins of Sirkap, the second city of Taxila, and is commonly believed to signify that Christianity had taken root in the subcontinent shortly after the crucifixion of Christ.
The ‘proof’ supporting this theory is a manuscript titled The Acts of St Thomas that was discovered in 1822 in Syria. According to this document, St Thomas having been assigned by Jesus to teach the gospel in India, arrived by boat at the seaside capital of King Gondophares. Working miracles, he successfully converted the king and all his subjects to Christianity.
Labels: Book of Days 2009, Punjab, Tales Less Told, Taxila
posted by Salman Rashid @ 11:52,
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