The primary cities of Gandhara were Purushapura (now Peshawar), Takshashila (or Taxila), and Pushkalavati. The latter remained the capital of Gandhara down to the 2nd century AD when the capital was moved to Peshawar. An important Buddhist shrine helped to make the city a center of pilgrimage until the 7th century.

Gandhara “flourished at the crossroads of Asia,” connecting trade routes and absorbing cultural influences from diverse civilizations; Buddhism thrived until the 8th or 9th centuries, when Islam first began to gain sway in the region. It was also the centre of Vedic and later forms of Hinduism.

Northern Pakistan
The Gandhara Civilization existed in what is now Northern Pakistan and Afghanistan from the middle of the 1st millennium BCE to the beginning of the 2nd millennium CE.

Gandhara art, style of Buddhist visual art that developed in what is now northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan between the 1st century bce and the 7th century ce.

Peshawar is located in an area that was dominated by various tribes of Indo-Iranian origin. The region was affiliated with theancient kingdom of Gandhara and had links to the Harappan civilization of the Indus River Valley and to Bactria and other ancient kingdoms based in Afghanistan.

Gandhāran Buddhism refers to the Buddhist culture of ancient Gandhāra which was a major center of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent from the 3rd century BCE to approximately 1200 CE. Buddhist Gandhāra was also influential as the gateway through which Buddhism spread to Central Asia and China.

The Gandhara School of art had also developed in first century AD along with Mathura School during reign of Kushana emperor Kanishka. Both Shakas and Kushanas were patrons of Gandhara School, which is known for the first sculptural representations of the Buddha in human form.

Once upon a time, Afghanistan was not how we see it today, that is what studies say. It was once known as Gandhara and the fact that it still has a city known by the name of Kandahar confirms the truth. As per the experts, the Gandhara kingdom covered portions of today’s northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan.

Gandhara Civilization Gandhara is the name of an ancient kingdom (Mahajanapada), located in modern-day northern Pakistan and parts of eastern Afghanistan. Gandhara was located mainly in the vale of Peshawar, the Potohar plateau, and the Kabul River.

It is thought that Gandhara was a triangular area of ​​about 100 km east to west and 70 km north to south, mainly west of the Indus River and bounded to the north by the Hindukush mountains. The size of the right Gandhara actually includes the Peshawar valley, the hills of Swat, Dir, Buner, and Bajaur, all within the northern borders of Pakistan.

However, Kandahar was not part of the territory of Gandhara. It is instead etymologically related to “Alexandria”. The boundaries of Gandhara varied throughout history. Sometimes the Peshawar Valley and Taxila were collectively referred to as Gandhara; sometimes the Swat Valley (Sanskrit: Suvāstu) was also included.

The Persian term Shahi is used by historian Al-Biruni to refer to the ruling dynasty that took over from the Kabul Shahi and ruled the region during the period prior to Muslim conquests of the 10th and 11th centuries. After it was conquered by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1001 AD, the name Gandhara disappeared.