THE WRINKLED IMAGE OF LOST CITIES 23

Taxila grew in beauty and celebrity. Asoka must have
recognized the importance of this city, for here he sent
his son as viceroy.

In the innumerable relics discovered in the mounds
of Taxila, and from the monasteries that once filled the
Haro Valley with life, can be traced the development
and blossoming of Buddhist arfc. From the dignified
simplicity of early Buddhist artistic expression to the
masterpieces of sculpture and decoration, Taxila displays
the whole story of a religious inspiration translated into
visible form. Taxila, however, was not only a centre of
Buddhism. Long ages before the birth of Gautama
the Buddha, the city figures in Sanskrit literature as a
< famed university and a prosperous centre of international
trade.

In fact, Taxila is a number of ancient cities on
three separate sites. Bhir Mound, the earliest site, in
its successive layers of ruins, descloses the remains of
several cities—some of them believed to go back to the
seventh century before the Christian era.. Rich in
relics of the sojourn of Alexander the Macedonian in
^ Northern India is one of these cities. It was to Bhir
Mound that his missionaries came when Asoka made
Buddhism the State religion. The little that remains
of the cities of Bhir Mound show the haphazard design
of streete and houses in those ancient times.

The second site of Taxila, Sirkap, offers an amazingly
symmetrical ground-plan, with its Main Street that
runs wide and straight due north and south, bisecting
the city; its side streets meeting the main at right
angles, and its vast palace with well defined sections.
in The numerable finds of utensils, implements of