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abducted from Bactrius, made Taxila as their capital. Emperor Sikandar conquered it in 326 BC. After four years Chandra Gupt Maurya included Taxila in his kingdom In 190- BC Demetrius conquered it and made it capital of Greek territories on Indian soil. After that, Taxila remained under Shakas, Pallavas and Kushan Kings.
A Chinese traveller, Shuwan Chuwang, while travelling from Mid-east to India in the beginning of 7th Century, stayed in Shalatur. At the corner forming between Kubha (Kabul) river and Indus was situated Shalatur where Panini thre great indian scholar and Philosopher was borne. Panini developed phonetic aspect of the language. Surgeons like Komarjeev and politicians like Chankya and Bhartiya were teaching at the taxilsa university. Bit Siyuku (1/114) had identified Shalatur as a village named Lahur where one can witness many earthen raised grounds are there. During excavation of these earthen plateaus some old statues had been unearthed (36 E]
In the 5th century Panini had mentioned in his famous grammer book the names of 6 mountains appearing namely Kinshukagiri, Anjanagiri, Lohitagiri, Shalnakagiri, Kukkutagiri existing in the kingdom of Kinshuk. Out of these Kukkutagiri was very famous. Shalatur was only 6.5 km away from Ohind. Ohind was famous for its horse race and was situated on the west of Indus river, and Urdi (Uddiyan) and Ursha janpads (Modern Hazara) in the east.
Sir John Marshal (Director General, Archeology of India, Calcutta 1921) was the first person to have discovered Taxila. On the basis of archeological findings and old manuscripts he mentioned that script used by people of Taxila was Kharosti and prakrit was their general speaking language. The Kharosti script which is written from right to left came into existence in the northwestern part of India. On the other hand Brahmi script as per Chinese archives, was also adopted by Mauryas, Bactrians, Parthians, Shakas and Kushans. Dr. Udit narain Tiwari was of the view that the origin of Brahmi script was from Kharosti which originated from Indus Valley Civilization and its script images, essence and its iconic forms emerged finally into the Brahmi script.
According to him the statues found in F & G blocks of Sarkap must be of Jaina idols. The same has been corroborated By Maj. Gen, JSR Furlong [36] in his book 'Science of Comparative religions' about the presence of jain saints around Taxila. Hence it is a sufficient proof that Taxila was a important jain center.
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