REASONS FOR TRANSFERRING CITY FROM SIRKAP

When the Kushān invaders decided to abandon the city of Sirkap and build a new one in its place, they selected a site, now known as Sirsukh, on the further side of the Luṇḍī nālā, about a mile north-north-east from the northern wall of Sirkap. To reach it, the visitor should proceed about a mile and a half along the main road from Jaṇḍiāl to Khānpur and then walk a short distance across the fields to the south-east corner of the city. What reasons the Kushāns had for abandoning the existing city can only be surmised. Possibly it was an accepted tradition and a matter of prestige with them, as it was in after days with the Moslem conquerors of Delhi, to signalise their conquest of the country by founding a new capital city. Or it may be that they mistrusted the defences of the Sirkap city, which, following the Hellenistic pattern, took in a certain area of the rocky Hathiāl spur and were to some extent commanded from high ground outside the walls. But another and perhaps more potent reason may have been that shortly before their arrival the Sirkap city had been visited by a deadly plague which wiped out half the inhabitants, and that only two or three decades earlier it had been laid in ruins by a devastating earthquake, the effects of which were no doubt still only too apparent. The Kushāns, therefore, would have had the best of reasons for regarding the existing city as at once pestilential and dangerous and for choosing a more salubrious site in the open valley to the north. Abundant coin-finds in Sirkap make it clear that the transference took place under V'ima Kadphises, but the older city would no doubt continue to be occupied by some remnants of the population, just as the Bhiṛ Mound city had been partially occupied for some time after the bulk of the population had moved into Sirkap.

LAYOUT OF NEW CITY

The new city, now known as Sirsukh, is a slightly irregular rectangle, measuring nearly 1500 yards along its northern and southern sides and 1100 along its eastern and western.