Taank Kingdom
early medieval kingdom in Punjab
Taank Kingdom (also known as Takka, Taki, Tseh-kia, Takkadeśa, Takeshar and other variants) was a kingdom based in Punjab from 7th to 10th centuries CE. It was located south of Kashmir and north of Sindh, extending from the Indus in the west to the Beas in the east. Its capital was the city of Sagala (modern day Sialkot).
History
Takka kingdom was called as Tseh-kia or Zhejia (磔迦) by the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, who visited it in 629–645 CE. According to him, the kingdom stretched from river Beas in its east to the Indus in the west, and the states of Mülasthanapura (Multan) and Bofadou or Parvata (near modern Sialkot) were its vassals. According to Hermann Goetz, the Gurjara Takkadeśa was a "buffer vassal state" of the Pratihara dynasty and Gurjara princes of Takkadeśa used titles of Turkic origin, for example, Ālakhāna, originating from Il-Khān. He further considers Gujars as descendants of Gurjaras.
Xuanzang further noted that it produced abundant quantities of non-sticky rice and wheat, also gold, brass, iron and other metals. Despite having an illustrious Buddhist heritage as evident from three colossal stupas, Buddhism had declined in the region, and later collapsed after the Alchon Hun persecution, resulting in it being sparsely practised in only about ten monasteries. On the contrary, Brahminical Hinduism rose as the primary religion in the region and there were several hundreds of Hindu Deva shrines.
Hyecho, a Korean Buddhist monk from Silla, also visited the kingdom in the early 8th century. He recorded its name as Takshar or Zhashe (吒社), and located it to the west of Jālandhara.
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This entry incorporates text from “Taank Kingdom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.