RECENSION OF THE MAHABHARATA 197
mission to the Greek raid under Alexander. In mediaeval Europe, similarly, medicine could be learnt at Cordova, because there was the meeting-place of East and West. In the Moorish university African, Arab, Jew, and European all met, some to give, others to take, in the great exchange of culture. It was possible there to take as it were a bird's-eye view of the most widely separated races of men, each with its characteristic out-look. In the same fashion, Taxila in her day was one of the focal points, one of the great resonators, as it were, of Asiatic culture. Here, between 600 B.C. and a.d. 500, met Babylonian, Syrian, Egyptian, Arab, Phoenician, Ephesian, Chinese, and Indian. The Indian knowledge that was to go out of India must first be carried to Taxila, thence to radiate in all directions. Such must have been the actual position of the city in the Hindu consciousness of the Gupta period. Had this fact anything to do with its choice as the legendary setting for the first telling of the Mahabharata? Did Vikramaditya regard the poem, perhaps, as a kind of Purana of India herself, as the national contribution to world-letters? Or are we to look for the explanation to the name Takshasila only (=Takshakasila?), and to the part played in the first volume by the great serpent Takshaka?
Supposing the year A.D. 400 to be rightly chosen as that of the final compilation of the Mahabharata, and the city of Pataliputra as the scene of its com-
