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The pageant that was Taxila began at Sarai Kala, once an outlying village of Dheri Shahan near the Grand Trunk Road that is now part of the urban sprawl of modern-day Taxila. Here a settlement thrived by the side of a small perennial stream as early as 3100 BCE. Around 1000 BCE, this community moved north, for reasons yet unknown, to the banks of the rivulet of Tamrah. The city they founded here was called Takshasila after the dressed stone that was its basic building material. While the educated may have called the city by this name, the common man traversing its ancient streets pronounced it as Takhasila. And so, when Alexander led his legions past the gates of the walled city in the spring of 326 BCE, the name was Hellenized and preserved in his histories as Taxila.