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Gandāra

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For other uses, see Gandhara (disambiguation).

Achaemenid Gandhāra
𐎥𐎭𐎠𐎼
Gaⁿdāra (Old Persian)
Satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire
c. 500 BCE–c. 330 BCE
Government
 • Typemonarchy
King of Kings 
• c. 535–530 BCE
Cyrus II (first)
• 359/8–338 BCE
Artaxerxes III (last)
Historical eraAchaemenid era
c. 500 BCE
• Disestablished
August/September c. 330 BCE
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
File:Blank.png Gandhāra
Kingdom of Taxiles File:Blank.png
Peucelaotis File:Blank.png
Kingdom of Abisares File:Blank.png
Kingdom of Assacani File:Blank.png

Gandāra, or Gadāra in Achaemenid inscriptions (Old Persian cuneiform: 𐎥𐎭𐎠𐎼, Gadāra, also transliterated as Gaⁿdāra since the nasal "n" before consonants was omitted in the Old Persian script, and simplified as Gandāra or sometimes Gandara)[1] was one of the easternmost provinces of the Achaemenid Empire in South Asia, following the Achaemenid invasion of the Indus Valley. It appears in various Achaemenid inscriptions such as the Behistun inscription and the DNa inscription of Darius the Great.[2]

The province, or at least its western portion, was also referred to as Para-uparisaina (Ancient Greek: Παροπαμισάδαι, Paropamisádai; Latin: Paropamisadae) in the Babylonian and Elamite versions of the Behistun inscription.[2] The extent of the province was apparently wider than the region of Gandhara.[3]

History

Gandhara before the Achaemenid conquest

During the 6th century BCE, Gandhāra was an important mahajanapada in north-west Iron Age South Asia, with the other states of the Punjab region, such as the Kekayas, Madrakas, Uśīnaras, and Shivis being under Gandhārī suzerainty.[4] The Gandhārī king Pukkusāti, who reigned around mid 6th century BCE, 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.[4][5] Pukkusāti also had friendly relations with the king Bimbisāra of Magadha.[4]

Achaemenid conquest

Main article: Achaemenid invasion of the Indus Valley

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.[6]

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.[7] 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 Gandhārī 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 with the growth of Achaemenid power under the kings Cambyses II and Darius I.[4]

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,[6] with the annexation under Cyrus being limited to Gandhāra proper, after which the peoples of the Punjab region previously under Gandhārī authority took advantage of the new power vacuum to form their own small states.[4]

Achaemenid period

The satrapy of Gandāra, with its capital at Pushkalavati (present-day Charsadda),[8] was established in the general region of the old Gandhara grave culture. During Achaemenid rule, the Kharosthi alphabet, derived from the one used for Aramaic (the official language of Achaemenids), developed here and remained the regional script of Gandhāra until 200 CE.

The inscription on Darius' (521–486 BCE) tomb at Naqsh-i-Rustam near Persepolis records Gadāra (Gandāra) along with Hindush (Hənduš) in the list of satrapies. By about 380 BC the Persian hold on the region had weakened. Many small kingdoms sprang up in Gandhara.

Macedonian conquest

Main articles: Indian campaign of Alexander the Great and Cophen campaign

In 327 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered Gandhara as well as the Indian satrapies of the Persian Empire. The expeditions of Alexander were recorded by his court historians and by Arrian (around 175 CE) in his Anabasis Alexandri and by other chroniclers several centuries after the event.In the winter of 327 BCE, Alexander invited all the chieftains in the Indus Valley to submit to his authority. Omphis, then ruler of Taxila, but the remaining tribes and clans rejected Alexander's offer.

The first tribe Macedonians encountered were the Aspasioi tribe of the Kunar Valley, who initiated a fierce battle against Alexander, in which he himself was wounded in the shoulder by a dart. However, the Aspasioi eventually lost and 40,000 people were enslaved. Alexander then continued in a southwestern direction where he encountered the Assakenoi tribe of the Swat Valley in April 326 BCE. The Assakenoi fought bravely and offered stubborn resistance to Alexander and his army in the cities of Ora, Bazira and Massaga. So enraged was Alexander about the resistance put up by the Assakenoi that he massacred the entire population of Massaga and reduced its buildings to rubble. A similar slaughter then followed at Ora,[9] another stronghold of the Assakenoi. The stories of these slaughters reached other Assakenians, who began fleeing to Aornos, a hill-fort located between Shangla and Kohistan. Alexander followed close behind their heels and besieged the strategic hill-fort, eventually capturing and destroying the fort and killing everyone inside. The remaining smaller tribes either surrendered or like the Astanenoi were quickly neutralized where 38,000 soldiers and 230,000 oxen were captured by Alexander.[10] With the conquest of Gandhāra complete, Alexander switched to strengthening his military supply line, which by now stretched dangerously vulnerable over the Hindu Kush back to Balkh in Bactria. Alexander nominated officers as satraps of the new provinces, and in Gandhara, Oxyartes was nominated to the position of Satrap in 326 BCE.

Administration

Very little has survived regarding the Achaemenid administration of the satrapy of Gandāra.[11] According to Bruno Jacobs, by the time of the arrival of Alexander, two main centres seem to have been established in the province. One was in Paropamisus in the west where Alexander established Alexandria in the Caucasus and installed his own satrap. Second was located to further east centred around Puṣkalāvatī (Peucelaotis), and appears to have been ruled by an indigenous family under Achaemenids.[11] One Irdatakma is known from Persepolis Administrative Archives to have sent 100 Zebu bulls from Gandāra to the queen Artystone; he was apparently the highest administrator or satrap in the province.[12]

Astis (reconstructed Indo-Aryan name Hasti) was the last, and the only known, satrap of Gandāra. He resisted the Macedonians and perished during the siege and fall of Peucelaotis, with Sangaeus (Sangaja 'victory'), another local noble, being appointed in his place.[13] Other dynasts are also mentioned: Sisikottus (Śaśigupta 'moon-protected') who fought in Bactria for Basseus and later acted as hyparch of Alexander over Assaceni; Assaceni chiefs Assagetes (Aśvajit) and Assacenus, and Copheus, etc., at the time of the Greek invasion.[11][13]

In Achaemenid army

Main article: Military of the Achaemenid Empire

According to Herodotus, soldiers of Gandāra participated to the Second Persian invasion of Greece around 480 BC.[14] They had a different equipment from the Hindush, rather akin to that of the Bactrians, and were under the command of Artyphius, son of Artabanus:

The Bactrians in the army wore a headgear most like to the Median, carrying their native bows of reed, and short spears. (...) The Parthians, Chorasmians, Sogdians, Gandarians, and Dadicae in the army had the same equipment as the Bactrians. The Parthians and Chorasmians had for their commander Artabazus son of Pharnaces, the Sogdians Azanes son of Artaeus, the Gandarians and Dadicae Artyphius son of Artabanus.

— Herodotus VII 64-66

The depiction of Indian soldiers and the names of the three provinces of Gandāra, Hinduš and Sattagydia still appear in trilingual cuneiform labels above their respective figures on the tomb of Artaxerxes II (c. 358 BCE).[15][16][17]

See also

Notes

References

  1. ↑ Some sunds are .omitted in the writing of Old Persian, and are shown with a raised letter.Old Persian p.164Old Persian p.13. In particular Old Persian nasals such as "n" were omitted in writing before consonants Old Persian p.17Old Persian p.25
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Perfrancesco Callieri, INDIA ii. Historical Geography, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 15 December 2004.
  3. ↑ Eggermont, Pierre Herman Leonard (1975). Alexander's Campaigns in Sind and Baluchistan. Peeters Publishers. p. 177. ISBN 978-90-6186-037-2. One should, therefore, be careful to distinguish the limited geographical unit of Gandhāra from the political one bearing the same name
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Prakash, Buddha (1951). "Poros". Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. 32 (1): 198–233. JSTOR 41784590. Retrieved 12 June 2022.
  5. ↑ Jain, Kailash Chand (1972). Malwa Through the Ages. Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 98–104. ISBN 978-8-120-80824-9.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Young, T. Cuyler (1988). "The early history of the Medes and the Persians and the Achaemenid empire to the death of Cambyses". In Boardman, John; Hammond, N. G. L.; Lewis, D. M.; Ostwald, M. (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–52. ISBN 978-0-521-22804-6.
  7. ↑ Sethna, Kaikhosru Danjibuoy (2000). "To Pāṇini's Time from Pāṇini's Place". Problems of Ancient India. Aditya Prakashan. pp. 121–172. ISBN 978-8-177-42026-5.
  8. ↑ Rafi U. Samad, The Grandeur of Gandhara: The Ancient Buddhist Civilization of the Swat, Peshawar, Kabul and Indus Valleys. Algora Publishing, 2011, p. 32 ISBN 0875868592
  9. ↑ Mukerjee, R. K. History and Culture of Indian People, The Age of Imperial Unity, Foreign Invasion. p. 46.
  10. ↑ Curtius in McCrindle, p. 192, J. W. McCrindle; History of Punjab, Vol I, 1997, p 229, Punjabi University, Patiala (editors): Fauja Singh, L. M. Joshi; Kambojas Through the Ages, 2005, p. 134, Kirpal Singh.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Jacobs, Bruno (2006). "ACHAEMENID SATRAPIES". Encyclopaedia Iranica. doi:10.1163/2330-4804_EIRO_COM_204.
  12. ↑ Alizadeh, Kiumars (2025). COURTS AND COURTIERS IN THE NEO-ELAMITE PERIOD (thesis). Universität Berlin. pp. 45–46.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Heckel, Waldemar (2006). Who's Who in the Age of Alexander the Great: Prosopography of Alexander’s Empire. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishing, Blackwell Pub. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-4051-1210-9. OCLC 59147827.
  14. ↑ Herodotus VII 64-66
  15. ↑ Olmstead, Albert Ten Eyck (1948). History of the Persian Empire. University of Chicago Press. pp. 291–292. ISBN 978-0-226-62777-9. The Gandarians thus make their last appearance as Persian tribute paying subjects in the lists of Artaxerxes, though the land continued to be known under the name of Gandhara down to classic Indian times {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  16. ↑ Inscription A2Pa of Artaxerxes II
  17. ↑ Lecoq, Pierre. Les inscriptions de la perse achemenide (1997) (in French). pp. 271–272.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
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