or Takhasira, which was the Buddhist form of the name. The original Sanskrit name was Taksha-sila nagara, or the city of "cut-stone," but the Buddhists, by the slight alteration of l to r, were enabled to invent the famous legend of Buddha cutting off his head to offer to a hungry tiger. The original name is preserved by the Greeks in Taxila, which is a very exact transcript of the Pali Takha-sila. But in spite of the prevalence of the Buddhist legend, the place was still called Takhasila even in Buddhist records, as we find in the copper-plate inscription which was found in Sir-sukh.[1] The date of this record is most probably very close to the beginning of the Christian era. But in the time of Mahmud of Ghazni the place was still called Tâkhasir. As I have noted above, the people are quite unanimous about the meaning of Sir-Kap, as the "severed head," and they all quote the legend of the Raja who used to play with strangers at Chaupar for "heads;" and when he won, which he always did by fraud, the loser had his head cut off, and therefore the Raja got the name of Sir-kap, or Sir-katne-wala, or the "beheader."
For the other name of Sir-sukh the people give no meaning, and are content with saying that he was the brother of Sir-kap. But I believe that it is only a corruption of the old name of Chhahara-chukhsa as found in the copper-plate inscription extracted from the stûpa of Liako Kusulako in the village of Thupkia, inside the enclosure of Sir-sukh. The old name would have been pronounced as Tshahara-tsukha in the Western Punjab, which is so close to an approximation to Saharsukh that the present name of Sir-sukh would certainly have been suggested by the neighbouring name of Sır-kap.
But the town of Chhahara-chukhsa is stated in its own inscription to be situated to the north-east of Takhasila, which is the very position which Sir-sukh bears to Sir-kap, and consequently Sir-kap must be Taxila.
In my previous report I described the ruins of a Greek Ionic temple at Mohra Maliâr outside the walls of Sir-kap. During my last visit I discovered the remains of a second Greek temple of the same Ionic style inside the city. The former I have already identified with a temple described by Apollonius, "whose dimensions were nearly 100 feet, built of porphyry, within which was a chapel, too small in proportion
- ↑ See Professor Dowson's Translation in the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal, Vol. XX, p. 221.
