The sacred geography of the Indic world — every site mapped, dated, storied, and cited.
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.
What follows is the temple’s own traditional account, transmitted through liturgy and local memory. It is recorded here as tradition, not as attested history.
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
Answers only from cited records
Opening the line…