Taxila, Punjab · 33.7450°, 72.8421°
The 'Great Stupa' of Taxila — the university city where Panini's grammar, Kautilya's statecraft and Gandharan art crossed paths with Persia and, after Alexander's passage, the Greek world. Ashoka, once viceroy here, enshrined the Buddha's relics in this stupa; around it grew the monasteries whose Greco-Buddhist sculpture gave the Buddha his first human image. UNESCO-listed since 1980.
Taxila is Takshashila of the Ramayana — founded for Bharata's son Taksha; here, the Jatakas say, princes and paupers alike paid the same fee to study under the same masters, the ancient world's memory of a true university.
coordinates: wikipedia-2026-08-26 · sources retrieved 2026-08-26 · dynasty page: Maurya