University of ancient Taxila

The university of ancient Taxila (ISO: Takṣaśilā Viśvavidyālaya) was a center of the Gurukula system of Brahmanical education in Taxila, Gandhara, in present-day Punjab, Pakistan, near the bank of the Indus River. It was established as a centre of education in religious and secular topics. It started as a Vedic seat of learning; while in the early centuries CE it became a prominent centre of Buddhist scholarship as well.
Following the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley, around 540 BCE, Taxila became the capital of their Hindush satrapy (colony), the earliest known archaeological remains date to this period. The city surrendered to Alexander in 326 BCE, was annexed by the Maurya Empire around 317 BCE, became part of the Indo-Greek Kingdom, around 200 BCE, annexed by the Indo-Scythians around 80 BCE, conquered, destroyed, and a new city founded by the Kushan Empire around 30 CE, to flourish as a seat of Buddhist learning, to be conquered, destroyed, and the site abandoned by the Hunas in the 5th century CE. Taxila was at the crossroad of the main trade roads of Asia, and was probably populated by Indians, Persians, Greeks, Scythians and many ethnicities coming from the various parts of the Achaemenid Empire. The 4th - 3rd century BCE Buddhist Jataka tales assert Taxila is where Aruni and his son Shvetaketu each had received their education, while 4th century BCE grammarian, Pāṇini, mentions the city in his Aṣṭādhyāyī.
According to John Marshall, Taxila emerged as a centre of learning after the Persian conquests due to its geographical position, "at the North-Western gateway of the subcontinent," and the "cosmopolitan character of her population." It started as a Brahmanical seat of learning. According to Frazier and Flood, the highly systemized Vedic model of learning helped establish Buddhist Mahavihara at the site, and later Nalanda (mid 5th century CE), Odantapuri (8th century CE), and Vikramashila (late 8th century CE). These Buddhist institutions not only taught Vedic texts and the ritual but also the different theoretical disciplines associated with the limbs or the sciences of the Vedas, which included disciplines such as linguistics, law, astronomy and reasoning. Taxila was particularly renowned for Vedic science, medicine, and the arts, but both religious and secular subjects were taught, and even subject such as archery or astrology in.
According to John Marshall, "In early Buddhist literature, particularly in the Jatakas, Taxila is frequently mentioned as a university centre where students could get instruction in almost any subject, religious or secular, from the Veda to mathematics and medicine, even to astrology and archery." The role of Taxila as a center of knowledge grew stronger under the Maurya Empire and Greek rule (Indo-Greeks) in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. In the early centuries CE it was a prominent centre of Buddhist scholarship as well.
It was not a university in the modern sense, in that the teachers living there may not have had official membership of particular colleges, in contrast to the later Nalanda university in Bihar.
The destruction by Toramana in the 5th century CE seem to have put an end to the activities of Taxila as a centre of learning.
Influential teachers who are said to have taught at university of Taxila include:
According to Stephen Batchelor, the Buddha may have been influenced by the experiences and knowledge acquired by some of his closest followers in the foreign capital of Taxila. Several contemporaries, and close followers, of the Buddha are said to have studied in Taxila, namely: