The Description of Sāgala (present-day Sialkot) in an Ancient Buddhist Text

Abstract

An elaborate description of Sāgala as an ideal type of city is contained in the Milindapañha, “The Questions of King Milinda”, namely in the introductory story of this Buddhist text. Although being highly stereotyped, the description offers valuable clues regarding the ideals of urban planning in the north of ancient Pakistan. This account, like the more general depictions of city life in the text, reveals the wellplanned and cosmopolitan character of towns in the north of Pakistan in the last century BCE and the first centuries CE.