Gandhara

Gāndhāra was an ancient region in the Peshawar basin in the north-west of the ancient Indian subcontinent, corresponding to present-day north-west Pakistan and north-east Afghanistan. The centre of the region was at the confluence of the Kabul and Swat rivers, bounded by the Sulaiman Mountains on the west and the Indus River on the east.

Quotes

• Ayu went eastwards, the Kuru-Pañcalas and Kasi-Videha are (his descendants) the Ayavas; (And) Amavasu (went) westwards, the Gandharas, Parsus and Arattas are (his descendants) the Amavasyavas.
  • Baudhayana Shrauta Sutra BSS 18:44. As quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• The next Druhyu king Gandhāra retired to the northwest and gave his name to the Gandhāra country.
  • Ancient Indian Historical Tradition by F.E. Pargiter, Motilal Banarsidas, Delhi-Varanasi-Patna, 1962. Quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. [1]

• Hindu society as a whole has ceased to remember that Afghanistan rose on the ruins of Gandhara and Kamboja, the two ancient Janapadas of Bharatavarsha which had stood guard on our North-Western gateway for ages untold.
  • Sita Ram Goel. Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

• [Kennedy also notes the anthropological continuity between the Harappan population and that of the contemporaneous Gandhara (eastern Afghanistan) culture, which in an Aryan invasion scenario should be the Indo-Aryan settlement just prior to the Aryan invasion of India:] “Our multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity.”
  • Kenneth A. R. Kennedy: “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?”, in George Erdosy, ed.: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.49. quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• As a side note, one reference in particular is repeatedly produced from the Puranas as evidence of a large emigration from Gandhara, Afghanistan, to the northern regions. The narrative is situated in the time of Mandhatr, who drove the Druhyu king Angara out of the Punjab. Pargiter ([1922] 1979) notes that the next Druhya king, Gandhara, retired to the Northwest and gave his name to the Gandhara country (which survives to the present day in the name Kandahar in Afghanistan). The last king in the Druhyu lineage is Pracetas, whose hundred sons take shelter in the regions north of Afghanistan 'udicitn disam as'ritah'and become mlecchas. The Puranas make no further reference to the Druhyu dynasty after this.38 The more enthusiastic see this as "evidence of the migration of Indo-Europeans from India to Europe via Central Asia" (Talageri 1993, 367).
  • Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.