Voices of Gandhara

By Assad Sharifi Pashtun cries before the ruins of Gandhara. I did not know I was searching until I found it. I did not know I was lost...

The Gandharan mind did not see the world in tribal binaries.It carved Buddhas with Hellenistic drapery.It wrote in Kharosthi, a right-to-left script born of Aramaic, not Indian Brahmi.It spoke Gandhari Prakrit, not Persian, not Sanskrit.It meditated, traded, painted, whispered.

The Gandhari Language: The Lost Mother Tongue of the Frontier

A Script Born of Trade Winds and Philosophies Kharosthi was not born in isolation. It emerged at a crossroad where languages, religions, and ideas mingled like travelers at a caravanserai. Around the 3rd century BCE, under the gaze of the Mauryan Empire and the open-minded Ashoka, Gandhara became a melting pot. The script itself was a hybrid child:

it is the skeleton of thought, the blueprint of a people’s worldview