Taxila - Takshashîlâ (तक्षशिला) in its form Sanskrit E, Takkasîlî in Faded - is an important archeological site of old the Gandhara. It is located in the district of Râwalpindî, in the Pakistani province of the Panjâb, at its border with the Province of the Border of the North-West, at the west of Islâmâbâd and, and close to the end of the Grand Trunk Road. It is perhaps about the Taxiala of Ptolémée.

Taxila was a center of Buddhist study ancient, connected through the passage of Khunjerab to the Silk route and thus attracting students of the whole of the old Buddhist world. The site is in full blooming between the I {{er}} and the 5th century when it is, with Peshawar, one of the two main cities of the Gandhâra. Remarkably located at the intersection of three major routes for the trade, it was of economic and strategic importance considerable.

Darius Ier integrates Taxila into the Empire achéménide in -518. Alexandre Large the takes it in -326 and creates a garrison of Macedonians there, but the Greeks lose the city in -317 for the benefit of Chandragupta Maurya, which seizes Panjâb, and of its successors, of which its grandson Ashoka who would have made his studies there.

Shortly after the death of Ashoka, Taxila is taken by the Greeks of Bactriane who reign there until worms -90, followed by the Scythe S, the Parthian S in 19 and the Koushan S in 78 whose empire will be crushed by the Shvetahûna or Huns white which ravavagèrent the city in 455.

Several establishments followed one another on the site. Oldest, Bhir-Mound was active V {{E}} at second century BC. The excavations revealed a city without apparent plan there, at the houses of coarse masonry, but with a system of treatment of waste water. One found there more than thousand Greek parts among which two tétradrachmes of Alexandre Large the and a statère of Philippe Arrhidée.

Separated by a brook, one finds the establishment of Sirkâp , probably created by the satraps indo-Greeks, and who was excavated between 1912 and 1935 by the archeologist to sir John Marshall. Sirkâp follows a checkerboard plan, shared by central main street and six periods of construction there are counted. It revealed a great quantity of local currencies, of all the periods, Scythian, Parthian and koushane.

Sirkâp is abandoned at the 2nd century with the profit of a new site, named Sirsukh , with more than one kilometer in north. It is this establishment which will fall in front of Shvetahûna.

Taxila is classified with the inheritance of Humanity of UNESCO.

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