Gandhara


'''Gandhāra''' (also Ghandara, Ghandahra) is the ancient name of a region in eastern Afghanistan and north-west Pakistan centered on the Swat River (see Udyana) and Kabul River, tributaries of the Indus River. Its primary cities were Peshawar and Taxila. [[Buddha's First Sermon at Sarnath, Kushan Period, ca. 3rd century Pakistan (ancient region of Gandhara)]] Gandhāra is noted for the distinctive Gandhāra style of Buddhist art, a consequence of the Greco-Buddhist syncretism which fused Indian influences with Hellenistic influences during the centuries following Alexander the Great's conquest of Central Asia in 334 BCE. The Gandhāran style flourished beginning in the 1st century CE under the Kushan dynasty until the invasion of the White Huns in the 5th century. The Gandharan Buddhist texts are both the earliest Buddhist texts ever discovered and the earliest Indian manuscripts ever discovered. Most are composed on birchbark and were found in labeled clay pots. The area's language, Gāndhārī, was a collection of related Prakrit or "Middle Indo-Aryan" dialects. Gāndhārī was written right-to-left in the Kharoṣṭhī script, which was ultimately adapted from the Aramaic alphabet. At the time of its adoption, Gandhāra was controlled by the Achaemenid dynasty of the Persian empire, which used a similar script to write the related Iranian languages of the Empire. This alphabet also sets Gāndhārī apart as a unique set of dialects of the Middle Indo-Aryan period; Semitic scripts were not used to write Indian languages again until the arrival of Islam and subsequent adoption of the Persian-style Arabic alphabet for New Indo-Aryan languages like Urdu, Sindhi and Kashmiri. This unique writing system died out about the 4th century CE, though descendents of these distinct regional dialects are still spoken today. Gandhāra is also thought to be the location of the mystical Lake Dhanakosha, birthplace of Padmasambhava, founder of Tibetan Buddhism. The bKa' brgyud (Kagyu) sect of Tibetan Buddhism identifies the lake with Andan Dheri stupa, located near the tiny village of Uchh near Chakdara in the lower Swat Valley. A spring was said to flow from the base of the stupa to form the lake. Archaeologists have found the stupa but no spring or lake can be identified.

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Category:Ancient Peoples fr:Gandhâra

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