At Taxila you
come face to face with the great Buddha. He looms over you larger than life.
His serene eyes gaze at you till you find yourself gripped by a feeling of awe.
You meet others also at Taxila. Alexander of Macedonia, for one. And Asoka, the
famous Buddhist king. And the Emperor Kanishka, perhaps the greatest of them all.
Their imprints are everywhere.
As you, the space-age visitor,
step into Taxila you feel suddenly 2,500 years younger. For that is when one of
the world’s least known but most interesting civilizations took root and
flourished in Taxila --- that ancient city south of the River Indus. Once a
province of the powerful Achaemenian Empire, Taxila was conquered by Alexander
in 327 B. C. It later came under the Mauryan dynasty and reached a remarkably
mature level of development under the great Asoka.Then appeared the Indo-Greek
descendants of Alexander’s warrior and finally came the most creative period of
Gandhara. The great Kushan dynasty was established about 50 A.D. During the
next 200 year. Taxila became a renowned centre of learning, from as far away as
China and Greece. The end came in the fifth century A.D. when the White Huns
snuffed out the last of the successive civilizations that had held unbroken
sway in this region for several centuries.
Exploring Taxila is a
multi-dimensional experience. You are attracted by the richness and variety of
the famed Gandhara sculpture. There are endless images of Buddha, in stone and
stucco, and numerous panels depicting all the important stages of the great sage’s
life. Exquisitely sculpted friezes and statues of all sizes evoke the life and
times of one of the worlds’ most impressive men of peace: Gautama Buddha.
Each
carved bit of sculpture, from the colossal to the miniature ---- and there are
literally thousands of them – is a collector’s item. Even if you aren’t exactly
a devotee of the sculpture of the first century A.D., you will find it a
challenge to trace similarities between the Gandhara masterpieces and their
Graeco-Roman counterparts. Incidentally, it is these stone men and women of
Gandhara who greet you so graciously in Taxila, or rather their craftsmen, who
first gave visual expression to Buddha and his era. And then there are the
excavated ruins. Three distinct cities stretch before you in a surprisingly
good state of preservation. With your imagination aided by the carved people
who inhabit these cities, you will have little difficulty in picturing crowds
on the well laid out streets, families in the spacious houses, priests in the
towering stupas and royalty in the great palaces.
The
earliest city, Bhir Mound, dates back to the sixth century B.C. Its irregular
streets, cramped houses and mediocre public building indicate its primitive
origins. Sirkap, on the opposite side of the Tamara Stream, is much newer,
having been built in the second century B.C. You will find Sirkap a
well-planned city. And as you stroll down its wide streets, you can call at the
houses of the affluent and go slumming, as it were, in the more crowded
sections where dwelt the common man of the dim and misty past. Note the
fortification wall, the long, straight and impressive main street, the Royal
Palace, and Apsidal Temple and the Shrine of the Double-Headed Eagle. The third
city, Sirsukh, is modern by comparison. It was apparently built by the Kushan
kings in the first century A.D. It has not been fully excavated as yet but it
is clearly a well fortified, well laid out city, patterned after Central Asian
cities and is complete with a suburb.
In
addition to these three major cities, many important monasteries, stupas and
palaces have been excavated all along the Taxila valley. Many more, surely,
still lies buried awaiting discovery. If you can’t manage all, you must at
least explore the remarkable Dharmarajika Stupa, three kilometers east of the
Taxila Museum. It comprises a main building, a monastery area where the monks
lived and a series of small chapels. Sacred relics of Buddha and a silver
scroll commemorating the relics were found in one of the chapels. A wealth of
gold and silver coins, gems, jewellery and other antiques were discovered at
Dharmarajika. They are all housed in the Taxila Museum.
There is also Jaulian, another
impressive complex of chapels, stupas, quadrangles, and a monastery with
assembly hall, storerooms, refectory, kitchen and bathrooms. At five small
stupas you will see beautiful stucco relief of Buddha and Bodhisatvas supported
by rows of stone elephants and lions. Two miles from Jaulian is another
well-preserved monastery --- at Mohra Moradu. In one of the monk’ cells here
was found a small stupa with almost all the details intact. At Jandial, two
kilometers from Sirsukh, is an imageless temple in the classic Greek style,
with columns and cornices.
For the climbers, there is the
Glen of Giri, about five kilometers from Dharmarajika Stupa. Atop the highest
peak of a range of hills are two stupas and a fortress built in a cleft near a
spring of pure, sweet water. The stucco decoration of the stupas are well worth
the climb. No amount of description can do justice to Taxila. To feel and
understand its full importance, you simply have to go there. Even today, Taxila
is a place of peace. Its pastoral landscape is almost as inviting as its living
past. Early man knew what he was doing when 3,000 years ago he chose to site
his cities in this delightful, hill-edged valley.
The Museum
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