PUSHKALAVATI or Peukelaotis, Pukka laoti, Pukkala, stupa of the eyes gift.' Accord ing to General Cunningham, the ancient capital of Ghandara was Pushkalavati or Peukelaotis, which is said to have been founded by Pushkara, the son of Bharata, and the nephew of Rama. Its antiquity is undoubted, as it was the capital of the province at the time of Alexander's expedition. The Greek name of Peukelaotis or Peucolaitis was immediately derived from Pukkalaoti, which is the Pali or spoken form of the Sanskrit Push kalavati. It is also called Peukelas by .A.rriati, and the people are named Peukalei by Dionysius Periegeti, which are both close transcripts of the Pali Pukkala. The form of Proklais, which is found in Arrian's Periplus of the Erythrman Sea, and also in Ptolemy's Geography, is perhaps only an attempt to give the Hindi name of Pokhar instead of the Sanskrit Pushkara. According to .A.rrian, Peukelas was a very large and populous city, seated not far from the river Indus. It was the mpital of a chief named Astes, perhaps Hasti, who was killed in the defence of one of his strong holds, after a siege of thirty clays, by Ilephms tion. -Upon the death of Astes, the city of Peu kelaotis was delivered up to Alexander on his march towards the Indus. Its position is vaguely described byStrabo and Arrian as near the Indus.' But the geographer Ptolemy is more exact, as he fixes it on the eastern bank of the river of Suas tene, that is, the Panjkora or Swat river, which is the very locality indicated by Hiwen Thsang,. The river here mentioned is the Kophes, or river of Kabul ; and the bearing and distance from Peshawur point to the two large towns of Parang and Charsada, which form part of the well-known Ifashtnagar, or Eight Cities,' that are seated close together on the eastern bank of the lower Swat river. -These towns are Tangi, Shirpao, Umrzai, Turangzai, Usmanzai, Rajur, Charsada, and Parang. They extend over a distance of 15 miles ; but the last two are seated close together in a bend of the river, and might originally have been portions of one large town. The fort of Hissar stands on a mound above the ruins of the old town of Hashtnagar, which General Court places on an island nearly opposite Rajur. All the suburbs,'
he says, are scattered over with vast ruins.' It seems to General Cunningham not in/probable that the modern name of Hashtnagar may be only a slight alteration of Hastinagara or city of Hasti,' which might have been applied to the capital of Astes, the prince of Peukelaotis. ,It was a com mon practice of the Greeks to call the Indian rulers by the names of their cities, as Taxiies, Assakanus, and others. It was also a prevailing custom amongst Indian princes to designate any additions or alterations made to their capitals by their own names. Of this last custom we have a notable instance in the famous city of Dehli, which, besides its ancient appellations of Indra prastha and Dilli, was also known by the names of its successive aggrandizers as Kot-Pithora, Kila Alai, Tughlakabad, Firozabad, and Shahjahau abad. It is true that the people themselves refyr the name of Hashtnagar to the eight towns,' which are now seated close together along the lower course of the Swat river ; but it seems to General Cunningham very probable that in this case the wish was father to the thought; and that the original name of Hastnagar, or whatever it may have been, was slightly twisted to Hasht nagar, to give it a plausible meaning amongst a Persianized Muhammadan population to whom the San.skrit Hastinagara was unintelligible. To the same cause he would attribute the slight change made in the name of Nagarahara, which the people DOW call Nang-nihar, or the Nine Streams.' In later times, Pushkalavati was famous for a large stupa, or solid tower, which was erected On the spot where Buddha was said to have made an alms-offering of bis eyes. In the period of Hiwen Thsang's visit it was asserted that the eyes gift ' had been made one thousand different times in as many previous existences ; but only a single gift is mentioned by the two earlier pilgrims, Fa Hian in the 5th century, and Sung-Yun in the 6th century.—Citnningliam's Ancient Geography, pp. 49-51.