Sir Sukh Site

History

Taxila built itself three times over. Bhir Mound came first, then Indo-Greek Sirkap, then Kushan Sirsukh. The new city was laid out as an irregular rectangle in ashlar masonry, its walls up to eighteen feet thick, faced in the heavy diaper masonry characteristic of the Parthian and early Kushan periods, with semicircular bastions set at regular intervals along them. The bastions are pierced with holes for archers to shoot through. John Marshall's limited excavations between the 1910s and 1930s established the plan. Kanishka, the greatest of the Kushan kings, ruled around 140–165 and extended his authority from Taxila to Kashmir, Punjab and Afghanistan.

Historical Significance

The rounded bastion and the diaper-faced wall are Central Asian forms. Sirsukh is where they arrive in South Asia, and part of the Taxila complex inscribed by UNESCO in 1980.

Architecture

The city site of Sirsukh lies about 4.5 km from the Taxila Museum towards the north-west, off Taxila Road near Marchabad village, and rather more than 1.5 km north-north-east of Sirkap. Sir John Marshall recorded it as a slightly irregular rectangle, measuring nearly 1,372 metres along its northern and southern sides and 920 metres along its eastern and western — the third city in the Taxila sequence.

Why Visit

Walk the wall. Its thickness, its rounded bastions and its archer holes are a foreign military idea landing in the subcontinent for the first time.

Interesting Facts

• Founded after 80 CE — the last of Taxila's three cities
• The walls run up to eighteen feet thick, with semicircular bastions at regular intervals
• The bastions are pierced with holes for archers
• Its fortification design is the earliest Central Asian influence of its kind in the subcontinent