Together with the Gandhara grave culture and the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture, it is considered by some scholars a nucleus of Vedic civilization.

The protector Vajrapani of the Buddha is another incarnation of Heracles ( Gandhara, 1st century CE )

Gandhara and Sattagydia ( Thatagus ) are listed amongst the provinces inherited by Darius when he seized the throne in 522 BC in his commemorative Behistun inscription, however, the dates of the initial annexation of these two regions is not certain.

* c. 2nd century-3rd century – Standing Buddha, from Gandhara ( Pakistan ), is made.

Bactria ( from, the Hellenized version of Old Persian Bāxtriš ; Elamite ba-ak-ši-iš, Persian and Pashto as باختر Bākhtar or Pākhtar ; ; Chinese ) is the ancient name of a historical region located south of the Amu Darya and west of Gandhara.

His advance through Swat and Gandhara is marked by the storming of the almost impregnable pinnacle of Aornos, a few miles west of the Indus.

So after the arrival of Buddhism in Gandhara, Hariti is transformed from an Iranic demon to the Buddhist figure of easy birthing as well as that of protection and parenting of children.

They claim to find in Laos a scale which the ancient Hindus called the " celestial scale ," the Gandhara grama, which is a tempered heptatonic scale, or a division of the octave into seven equal parts.

In addition, there is a large collection of Japanese prints, Buddhist art, Hindu art ( including Gandhara sculpture ), textiles and clothing, and Indian calendar prints.

In the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, in the first centuries CE in northern India, Maitreya is represented as a Central Asian or northern Indian nobleman, holding a " water phial " ( Sanskrit: Kumbha ) in his left hand.

The city dates back to the Gandhara period and contains the ruins of the Gandhāran city of Takṣaśilā which was an important Hindu and Buddhist centre, and is still considered a place of religious and historical sanctity in those traditions.

Alexander invited all the chieftains of the former satrapy of Gandhara, in the north of what is now Pakistan, to come to him and submit to his authority.

The Gandhara Hindko Board is a leading organisation that has been active in the preservation and promotion of the Hindko language and Hindkowan culture since 1993.

* Gandhara, an ancient kingdom located in what is now northern Pakistan

* Gandara the Moon Fortress is a location in the Guild Wars Nightfall game which may have been inspired by the ancient kingdom of Gandhara.

Alternatively, it is believed that " Kandahar " may derive its name from Gandhara, an ancient Indic kingdom along the modern Kashmir and Afghanistan border, and former satrapy of the Persian Empire.

It is suggested that people of Gandhara migrated south to Arachosia and transferred the name with them.

Commander Aspavarman is known from inscriptions and coins to have ruled in Gandhara in the early part of the 1st century.

Gandhara is also a proposed name of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province in Pakistan.

The name Gandhara is of Sanskrit origin, but its ultimate etymology is uncertain.

In the book " Histories " by Herodotus, Gandhara is named as a source of tax collections for King Darius.

It is also contended that the Kurus, Kambojas, Gandharas and Bahlikas were cognate people and all had Iranian affinities, or that the Gandhara and Kamboja were nothing but two provinces of one empire and hence influencing each other's language.

After it was conquered by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1021 CE, the name Gandhara disappeared.

Bellow, an emigrant from Gandhara in the 5th century brought this name to modern Kandahar.

Charles Willemen identifies the Sautrāntika as a Western branch of the Sarvāstivādins, active in the Gandhara area, who split from the Sarvāstivādins sometime before 200 CE, when the Sautrāntika name emerged.

In the epic, she was an incarnation of Mati, as the daughter of Subala, the king of Gandhara, or the modern Kandahar, a region spanning northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, from which her name is derived.

The name Gandhara disappeared after Mahmud of Ghazni conquered the area and converted it to Islam in 1026.

The name Gandhara first occurs in the Rigveda which is usually identified with the region

This name is sometimes collectively used to denote many other western kingdoms like Madra, Kekeya and Gandhara.

Vima Takto, using the name " Soter Megas " ( Great Saviour ), conquered Gandhara and northern India in 68 AD.

The Jataka also gives another name Chandahara for Gandhara.

These ancient satrapies included: Aria ( Herat ); Arachosia ( Kandahar, Lashkar Gah, and Quetta ); Bactriana ( Balkh ); Sattagydia ( Ghazni ); and Gandhara ( Kabul, Jalalabad, Peshawar ).

Standing Gautama Buddha | Buddha, ancient region of Gandhara, 1st century AD, Musée Guimet.

Foucher especially considered Hellenistic free-standing Buddhas as " the most beautiful, and probably the most ancient of the Buddhas ", assigning them to the 1st century BCE, and making them the starting point of the anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha (" The Buddhist art of Gandhara ", Marshall, p101 ).

In Japan, the first series ' ending theme, which was named after the ancient kingdom of Gandhara, was released by Columbia Music Entertainment on October 1, 1978, backed with " Celebration ".

Pali literature further endorses that only Kamboja and Gandhara of the sixteen ancient political powers belonged to the Uttarapatha or northern division of Jambudvipa but no precise boundaries for each have been explicitly specified.

However, Chulla-Niddesa, another ancient text of the Buddhist canon substitutes Yona for Gandhara and thus lists the Kamboja and the Yona as the only Mahajanapadas from Uttarapatha This shows that Kamboja had included Gandhara at the time the Chulla-Niddesa list was written by Buddhists.

The western parts of ancient Gandhara and Kamboja lay at the eastern edge of the Achaemenid Empire.

Both these ancient kingdoms, first Gandhara then Sindh, fell prey to Persia during the reign of Cyrus the Great ( 558 – 530 BCE ), and in the first years of the reign of Darius I ( 521 – 486 BCE ).

Recently an important archaeological discovery was made, consisting of the earliest known Buddhist manuscripts, recovered from the ancient civilization of Gandhara in north central Pakistan ( near Taxila just south west of the capital Islamabad ).

The script is an ancient Indic script used by the Gandhara culture of ancient Northwest South Asia ( primarily modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan ) to write the Gāndhārī language ( a dialect of Prakrit ) and the Sanskrit language.

In ancient times, the term Uttarapatha ( from the Sanskrit terms uttara, for north, and patha for road / path ) referred to the northern high road, the main trade route that followed along the river Ganges, crossed the Gangetic plain, ran through the Punjab to Taxila ( Gandhara ) and further to Zariaspa or Balkh ( Bactria ) in Central Asia.

They are thought to have been found in eastern Afghanistan ( Bamiyan, Jalalabad, Hadda, which were part of Gandhara ), and the clay jars were buried in ancient monasteries.

Foucher especially considered Hellenistic free-standing Buddhas as " the most beautiful, and probably the most ancient of the Buddhas ", assigning them to the 1st century BCE, and making them the starting point of the anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha (" The Buddhist art of Gandhara ", Marshall, p101 ).

Greek communities lived in the northwest of the Mauryan empire, in the region of Pakistan, notably ancient Gandhara near the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, and in southern Afghanistan in the region of Gedrosia, following the conquest and the colonization efforts of Alexander the Great around 323 BCE.