Gandāra

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. The extent of the province was apparently wider than the region of Gandhara.

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. 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. Pukkusāti also had friendly relations with the king Bimbisāra of Magadha.

Achaemenid conquest

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.

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. 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.

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, 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.

Achaemenid period

The satrapy of Gandāra, with its capital at Pushkalavati (present-day Charsadda), 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

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, 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. 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.