Person · Achaemenid emperor · Iran
Darius I
Also known as Darius the Great, Dārayavaḇuš
Darius I (c. 550-486 BCE), third Achaemenid emperor and the real architect of imperial Persia, extended the empire south-east into the lower Indus (Hindush satrapy) around 518 BCE and north-west against the Greeks. His Behistun inscription names Gandhara and Hindush as his tributary satrapies; the Persepolis inscription makes India the 24th and richest state of the empire (Herodotus: 360 talents of gold-dust annually, a third of all imperial gold). He sent the Greek navigator Skylax of Caryanda down the Indus and then via the Arabian Sea to Egypt in 515 BCE — the first attested outsider circumnavigation of the subcontinent’s western coast. At Behistun he refers to his own language as Aryan, the earliest datable self-identification by that term.
- Date
- -550–-486
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Achaemenid
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Connections (4)
- Ruled fromPersepolis
Darius I founded Persepolis in 518 BCE as the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid empire and left there the inscription naming the 23 satrapies including Gandhara and Hindush — the earliest datable Persian record of the subcontinent as an imperial province.
- InscriptionBehistun Inscription
Darius I’s Behistun rock inscription (c. 520 BCE) is the trilingual Old-Persian-Elamite-Babylonian decree listing his 23 satrapies, Gandhara among them; it is where he refers to his own language as Aryan — the earliest datable use of the term as a self-designation.
- Imperial administration ofGandhāra
Darius I annexed Gandhara around 518 BCE as a tributary satrapy of the Achaemenid empire; Herodotus records that the Indian satrapy (Hindush, downriver of Gandhara) was the richest province, paying 360 talents of gold-dust annually, a third of all Achaemenid gold revenue.
- Imperial administration ofTakshashilā / Taxila
The Takshashilā/Taxila region sat inside Darius’ Hindush satrapy; the Persian administrative apparatus and Aramaic bureaucratic script that passed through here are the ancestors of the Kharoshthi script used across north-west India until the 4th century CE.
Sources
Standard biography.
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