section_path: Etymology
section_name: Etymology
paragraph_text: Etymology
  
  The modern name of the city "Peshawar" is possibly derived from the Sanskrit word "Purushapura" (Sanskrit: पुरूषपुर Puruṣapura, meaning "City of Men" or "City of Purusha"). It was named so by Mughal Emperor Akbar from its old name Parashawar, the meaning of which Akbar did not understand. The ruler of the city during its founding may have been a Hindu raja named Purush; the word pur means "city" in Sanskrit. Sanskrit, written in the Kharosthi script, was the literary language (along with Gandhari Prakrit) employed by the Buddhist kingdoms which ruled over the area during its earliest recorded period. The city's name may also be derived from the Sanskrit name for "City of Flowers," Poshapura, a name found in an ancient Kharosthi inscription that may refer to Peshawar.
  
  Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang 's seventh-century account of a city in Gandhara called the city Po-la-sha-pu-lo (Chinese: 布路沙布邏, bùlùshābùló), and an earlier fifth-century account by Fa-Hien records the city's name as Fou-lou-sha (Chinese: 弗樓沙, fùlóshā), the Chinese equivalent of the Sanskrit name of the city, Purushapura. An ancient inscription from the Shapur era identifies a city in the Gandhara valley by the name pskbvr, which may be a reference to Peshawar.
  
  The Arab historian and geographer al-Masudi noted that by the mid-tenth century, the city was known as Parashāwar. The name was noted to be Purshawar and Purushavar by al-Biruni.
  
  The city began to be known as Peshāwar by the era of Emperor Akbar. The current name is said by some to have been based upon the Persian word for "frontier town" or, more literally, "forward city", though transcription errors and linguistic shifts may account for the city's new name. One theory suggests that the city's name is derived from the Persian name "Pesh Awardan", meaning "place of first arrival" or "frontier city", as Peshawar was the first city in the Indian subcontinent after crossing the Khyber Pass. Akbar's bibliographer, Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, lists the city's name as both Parashāwar, transcribed in Persian as پَرَشَاوَر, and Peshāwar (پشاور).