The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara

After what seemed like an endless run of geopolitical roadblocks, “The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara” has finally come, six months late, from Pakistan to Asia Society. Is the show worth all the diplomatic headaches it caused? With its images of bruiser bodhisattvas, poly-cultural goddesses and occasional flights into stratosphere splendor, it is.

A figure of the Buddhist deity Hariti, an infant-gobbling demon, is on display in "The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara" at Asia Society Museum, New York. That all but a handful of the 75 sculptures are from museums in Lahore and Karachi is in itself remarkable. Any effort to borrow ancient art from South Asia is fraught, even in the best of times. For an entire show of loans to make the trip, and in a period when Pakistan and the United States are barely on speaking terms, is miraculous. (Without the persistent effort of Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, the exhibition would almost certainly never have happened.) So the show has a cliffhanger back story as an attraction, and some monumental work, like the fantastic relief called “Vision of a Buddha’s Paradise.” (Dated to the fourth century A.D., it’s a kind of flash-mob version of heaven.)

But most of what’s here is neither dramatic nor grand: a chunk of a column; a head knocked from a statue; a panel sliced from some long-since-crumbled wall. Like most museums shows aiming for a big-picture view of a vanished world, it’s a scattering of small effects: precious scraps and remnants. For every stand-back-and-stare item, there are a dozen others that require close-up scrutiny and informed historical imagining to make their point.

The multi-layered and time-obscured history of ancient Gandhara is particularly difficult to grasp. The area, which encompassed what is now northwestern Pakistan and a sliver of Afghanistan, was a crossroads for international traffic. If you had business that took you to or from the Indian subcontinent, you passed through Gandhara. If you were in the business of empire building, you made every effort to control it.

Persia, under Darius I, colonized the area in the sixth century B.C. Two centuries later Alexander the Great, a Macedonian Greek and a conquest addict, charged in and charged out, leaving behind a Hellenistic occupancy, which held firm even as Gandhara was absorbed into the Mauryan empire of India, South Asia’s first great Buddhist power.

Over time Greco-Bactrians, Scythians and Parthians dominated the terrain. Then, around the first century A.D., the Kushans, originally nomads from the steppe-lands north of China, settled in, extending their reach down into the Indian subcontinent.

They were genuine cosmopolitans, linked to the Mediterranean, Persia and China, and tolerant of religions. It was under their aegis that Gandharan Buddhist art, compounded of foreign and local ingredients, flourished.

The exhibition, organized by Adriana Proser, a curator at Asia Society, begins by showing elements interacting. The first thing you see is a substantial female figure carved from the dark schist that was the common stone of the region. She has a funny look, familiar but not. She’s dressed in a sort of cocktail-dress version of a Roman stola; her hairdo is pure 1970s Charlie’s Angels, long but with back-flipped bangs.

Because she wears a helmet, she’s been called Athena in the past, though she probably represents some regional genius loci modeled, at a remove of thousands of miles, on Greco-Roman prototypes. Another female figure with comparable features has more certain identity. Much as she resembles a Roman goddess of good fortune, the three clinging children she juggles mark her as the Buddhist deity Hariti, an infant-gobbling demon, who, after a little enlightenment, changed her ways.

The culture mix thickens further. On a fragmentary stone panel we find in relief a Persian-style column with an Indian nature goddess posed in front of it. A squat stone figure in baggy Kushan pants turns out to be Skanda, the Hindu god of war. And a stele devoted mainly to sober scenes from Buddha’s life doubles as a playground for dozens of cupids.

The point is, Gandharan art was all over the map. Yet confusion sparked innovation. The first known figurative images of the Buddha are thought to have emerged from this region. So did, despite all the crazy components, an instantly recognizable sculptural style, on persuasive display in the second of the show’s three sections.

Here we find the classic Gandharan Buddha. Dating from the second to fifth century A.D., he is a standing figure in an ankle-length tunic and a toga like cloak that falls in rhythmical folds, with hints at the shape of the body beneath. The facial features are symmetrical and crisply cut, and idealized, though on ethnic and aesthetic terms different from those of a Greek Apollo. 

On the whole the image is naturalistic in a way that the purely Indian equivalents being carved from sandstone farther south were not. And the naturalism is especially pronounced in Gandharan images of bodhisattvas, those evolved beings who postpone nirvana to aid struggling creatures on earth.

One example from the Lahore Museum suggests a leader-of-the-pack biker: slightly paunchy, with a handle-bar mustache, a cascade of curls and a challenging stare. Technically, he’s Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, though judging by his ornamental hardware — bicep bracelets, neck chains — he still has something to learn about the spiritual path of less-is-more.

The show’s highlight, “Vision of a Buddha’s Paradise,” is in this section too, and culturally everything comes together here. The big Buddha seated at its center wears an off-the-shoulder robe, South Indian tropical attire, while a couple dozen of mini-bodhisattvas around him mix and match international fashions, with no two outfits, or gestures, or poses, quite the same. Two figures gaze raptly up at the Buddha; another, chin propped on hand, looks daydreamingly away; far below, two tiny observers feed lotuses to fish in a stream.

Was this really designed as a vision of Paradise? We don’t know, though we might if we had some clue as to the piece’s original setting, probably as one of several related panels in an architectural context. But, as is true of most Gandharan art collected before very recent times, such information went unrecorded, and an accurate sense of what this art meant to its makers and early viewers is lost.

Ms. Proser addresses the issue of context in the exhibition’s last section, which is in its own gallery, by going with what we know: that much Buddhist art from Gandhara took the form of carved narrative panels depicting episodes from the life of the Buddha; that these panels once appeared on the walls of sanctuaries or cylindrical stupa mounds; and that many of the artists were entertaining storytellers.

Their skills are evident in the sequence of a dozen or so panels arranged around a stupalike structure in the gallery. In one, the Buddha’s mother, Maya, anticipates his birth in a dream, and the artist has made her look like a Roman matron en déshabillé and asleep on her couch. But in a second panel, carved by a different artist and showing the infant Buddha being examined by a sage, we've switched countries and cultures: now we’re in a land of turbans, boots and layered outwear.

A third episode takes place after the Buddha’s enlightenment, as the lords of the four directions, essentially Vedic or Hindu beings, decorously offer him bowls of food. And a panel set next to that is packed with the figures of demons who had tried hard to prevent that enlightenment. The scene looks like a Wookiee convention. It’s very funny, but also rich with information about armor and weaponry in use centuries ago.

For historians the value of an exhibition is in just such details, while for nonspecialists the main attraction is likely to be visual impact. Ordinarily, I’d rather look at Kushan-era Buddhist art carved farther south from rosy Indian sandstone than at sculpture made in cold, dark stone in Gandhara. (Asia Society had a show of both in 1986.) But that’s just personal taste, and, besides, the show has changed my mind about this: it pulses with human warmth. That’s one of the things we go to great art for, though in this case, and against very long odds, some of that great art has come to us.

“The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara” remains through Oct. 30 at Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street; (212) 288-6400, asiasociety.org. {with thanks from Munir Alvi}

Hari-Yupuya to Harappa

Harappa or “Hari-Yupuya” as mentioned in the “Rig Veda” marked the height of urban development of the Indus valley civilization at 2600 B.C.E till 1900 B.C.E. for 700 years. Harappa is located in the present day province of Punjab , near Gogera, and in its full glory was the perfect proto-type of a fully developed city of the Indus valley civilization. It was the perfect reflection of the kind of organized thought which the Rig Veda emphasized. [Wheeler, Kenoyer].[go over page25 at the end].

Harappa has the same humble beginnings as any other large city. It began as a village settlement, gradually growing over the centuries to accommodate renowned craft industries, world accessible markets, and clean residential areas and cemeteries. Harappa is 128,800 hinterland, and 150 hectares in area. Harappa city was so developed and central to the Indus Empire that the name Harappa became synonymous with the dominant culture at the time, followed by all the other cities in the Indus region, right down to Kutch on the coast in present day India. [Rehman, Kenoyer].

Accordingly, the ruins of Harappa are three miles in circumference. The ruins of this city are split up into mounds, labeled from mound A, to G by archeologists, making points easily identifiable. The mounds were common to all Indus cities, and the higher the mound, the more central and important that area was in the city. For example the citadel mound was almost always the highest mound. This archetype Indus city was built on the east-west, north –south axis, and was surrounded by four city walls with a large entrance gate on the western wall. The gate was 2.8 meters wide, and 3 to 4 meters high, [Kenoyer], fixed with rooms or look out posts at the top. [Kenoyer]. Inside the gateway there was a grand space for a market making it easier for goods to be transported in and checked, taxed and sold. The Ox and cart was the method used to transport these goods, and the entrance was just big enough to allow one cart in and out at a time. Once inside the city gate, and past the market space, a network of roads led in to the centre of the city. The north road led to all the shell and agate workshops, the west road lead to the copper-craft workshops. Evidence of a caravanserai is found outside, and south of the main city gate. It contained houses, drains, baths, a wel,l and stables for horses. [Kenoyer 55].

It was a complete and accommodating stop for traveling traders and merchants, as Harappa was an integral part of an ancient trade route. Traders in fact helped the infra-structure flourish in the region. Kenoyer mentions that a modern road used at present outside of the city gates, near the old site of the caravanserai was in all likelihood laid out 4500 years ago by Harappan traders. This caravanserai was used for post transfers along the route as well, serving Lahore and Multan. This caravanserai was kept in use for thousands of years later by traveling traders, again verifying the fact that the city of Harappa was situated in a strategic position for trade routes.

A second gate was located 200 meters east of the first one. This gate led into a suburb of the city which also produced ornaments, crafts and other artifacts for trade. This gate also had a caravanserai approximately 50 meters south outside, to accommodate the traders who came to this part of the city. [Kenoyer 55].

There is no evidence of a palace or a huge residency for a monarch or ruler in the centre of the city. However there is a large building amongst many discernible houses in the northern suburb of the city. But it is thought that it was a storehouse, as there are many circular work-platforms upon which craft work, and ceramics were made. [Kenoyer 55]. According to the map of Harrapa, made by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, besides the carvanserai’s, the granaries, cemeteries, and the workmen’s quarters were outside the city walls. From the map it also seems like the western wall contained most of the gates accessible to the city, as well as the main entrance. The expansion of Harappa was gradual, and migrants from other cities, and nations were not unusual. However one culture was dominant in Harappa, and in fact Harappa culture dominated the rest of the cities too. This ensured peace and harmony throughout the Indus region. Even before Harappa became the epicenter of culture, peace and harmony dominated the Indus region. Non-violence, even in the form of self-defense, was a part of Indus religion, thus all invasions or migrations were not resisted, nor were there any clashes amongst tribes. The gates of the city were not constructed to counter any kind of military attack, nor were the walls made for self-defense. Walls surrounding mounds with in the city just demarcated different areas. [Kenoyer 56]. An imminent threat of war was not even an idea or a thought in the Indus valley. A uniform culture propagated peace. The city catered specifically to the smooth running of trade, and business, another integral of Indus religion.

Mohenjo-daro, or “Mound of the Dead” is thought to be similarly built to Harappa as all Indus cities possessed a common design reflecting Vedic, organized thought. It can also be prided in being the first city in the world to have a full-fledged draining system. A vast draining system for a whole city was invented in the land of the Indus.

The city of Mohenjo-daro is 169,260 sq km hinterland, and is 250 hectares. [Kenoyer]. This also suggests that Mohenjo-daro is older than Harappa. However, the remains of Mohenjo-daro are not all complete as they are at the excavated site of Harappa. There are no physical remains of walls and gateways, but the size of the foundations of these walls surrounding the city suggest that these walls were probably grander than those of Harappa. Mohenjo-daro was frequented by floods, which is the main reason why it did not flourish in the same way that Harappa did, and was probably the cause of its ultimate destruction. The eastern citadel at the time was situated very close to the Indus River. Flooding in this region is still a concern and a problem, even though the nearest branch of the river has shifted 3 miles away to the east. [Wheeler].

A Buddhist stupa and monastery were found on top of the western citadel, and were built there several centuries after the demise of the Indus civilization, in 200 B.C.E. Between the complete demise of the Indus civilization, and the spread of Buddhism, no other city as big as Mohenjo-daro existed in this region. Mohenjo-daro was thus built as a grid, organized on a north-south, east-west axis. It was built as a slope, obviously to counter the floods. The western citadel was the highest mound, which gradually ran down east, making the eastern citadel the lowest mound. Similar to Harappa, the highest mound marked the more important, central part of the city, where dignitaries and rulers lived, and probably was the hub for trade in this part of the Indus Empire.

Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were the capital cites of the Indus civilization, however the Indus River was not the only water-way which was included in this civilization. The Ghaggar-Hakra River was the other river feeding the Indus valley civilization, but dried up over the centuries to become the Cholistan desert. It ran through the areas of present day Punjab and Sindh, parallel and east of the Indus. The capital cities, and the cities of Ganweriwala, Rakhigarhi, were situated on different points of the banks of the Indus, fundamentally to be a part of the trade routes. The latter two covered only 80 hectares each in area, but were just as important for trade. Dholavira covered 100 hectares in area, and was the most furthest away from the centers, but was situated on the Rann of Kutch, which is now present day Indian Gujarat. Thus it served as a good base to import and export goods beyond the Arabian Sea, and fish, and sea shells found to be supplied and channeled around the Indus civilization. These smaller cities were built much in the same organized, grid like manner as the capitals. Indus architecture can be defined as logical, neat, functional, simple, and strives for order and organization. [Kenoyer, Wheeler]. Religion and trade routes were evidently the crux and core of the existence of these cities.

“Life is one long process of getting tired.” [Samuel Butler.] A territorial shift of Indus culture to the Ganges region; .

All things, great or small must come to an end. A great, thriving, and peaceful civilization such as the Indus civilization surprisingly did come to an end. It is thought that environmental changes, and tectonic plate shifts under the earth helped in its demise. Natural causes suggest an evolution, a slow and steady gradual change from the center of trade commerce shifting east to other major water systems in the sub-continent. The entire civilization shifted east, and south.

According to Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the exact cause is ambiguous. He says “Over-ambitious wars, barbarian invasions, dynastic or capitalistic intrigue, climate, the malarial mosquito have been urged severally in one context or another as an over-all cause.” [126, Wheeler.] Thus there is not a single cause for the demise of the Indus civilization. Perhaps it is safe to say that as a civilization that describes a population, it did not really demise, but moved. As a race, the Indus civilization is alive, and has evolved, and the people are known as Pakistani’s today. A history of the Indus civilization as a race is a history of shift and change, but gradual change and evolution, not dramatic upheavals or revolution. The Indus people did not die off. They just simply moved around the vast sub-continent due to unavoidable environmental circumstances. And since the time of the Aryan invasions, the inter-play with merchants from around the Gulf and Mesopotamia, and the rest of the sub-continent, the Indus valley race has always been subjected to changes. It was an area that primarily welcomed foreign influences, for strong trade ties. Racial intermingling and foreign influences were natural features of the Indus valley civilization B.C.E. Vedism developed with Aryan interjection, which eventually developed in to Brahamism, Jainism, and Buddhism. Trade made the Indus region famous, and attractive to foreigners. A history of the Indus region is a history of invasions.

As an Empire, as a fantastic, old, and rooted geo-economical force, the Indus valley civilization did come to an end. Mohenjo-daro was in all probability named “Mound of the dead”, because it was a city that was perpetually flooding, causing reoccurring destruction and reconstruction. There was a point where the population thought it wiser to move in the end, instead of reconstructing. The floods were as frequent as annual; the River Indus would swell each year due to rain and melting snow. It gradually became increasingly undesirable, unsafe and completely uninhabitable. Evidence of extreme flooding was still apparent as silt-clay deposits lay over the entire city; over the debris at the time of its excavation. Underneath the mass slush of clay were buried layers upon layers of brick platforms upon which the residents of the city kept rebuilding their homes and shops after a recent flood. [Wheeler]. According to research done by Dr. Dales in 1960, sea trade had actually stopped along the Makran Coast with the Persian Gulf around 1900 B.C.E. because of frequent flood-destruction making Mohenjo-daro unfit for international trade, and markets. This meant that the demise of Mohenjo-daro was inevitable. [Wheeler]. In fact residents of the city who could afford to move and rebuild their lives in other cities had found it more feasible to leave, consequently turning the affluent city of Mohenjo-daro in to a desperate slum. The focus of trade thus shifted to Harappa and the Rann of Kutch and its urban city Dholavira became the sea route for Persian trade. Harappan success was thus also inevitable.

Harappa did not demise as a city, as natural calamity did not hit its path. However, the importance of Harappa as the hallmark of Indus culture did shift.

It is mentioned above repeatedly that Harappan culture defined Indus culture as a whole, by 2600 B.C.E onwards. This period was marked by the height of the Indus region’s success as a flourishing, and progressive civilization. However 1900 B.C.E onwards saw a gradual shift of the territorial centre of culture from the Indus region to the middle, the Ganges River region. This was also known as the late Harappan phase. Indus culture, also known as Harappan culture shifted a long with its people, giving space for it to evolve into a new civilization, by accumulating new beliefs. Harappan unity broke down in to fragmented, smaller societies, spread-out as far as Afghanistan, and Central Asia in the north-west, and the Ganga-Yamuna Rivers in the south-east. Opportunity cost? Or just plain opportunity? Buddhism evolved around 600 B.C.E and spread though-out the sub-continent, whilst continuing to endorse the importance of trade. Most traders and merchants were Buddhists, as this knowledge system believed in equality, as opposed to the Aryan tradition of social hierarchy. Trade routes thus spread, resulting in more invasions, more political upheavals, more trade, more migrations, and a spread of Buddhism. Most caravanserais were also Buddhist monasteries, where Buddhist monks were ready to serve the weary traveling merchant by 300-200 B.C.E. Alexander the Great arrived in 326 B.C.E. only to begin a new era of culture which was a mixture of Greek and Buddhist culture known as Ghandara culture. Indus culture had evolved in to a more mature school of thought, as well as holding on to the importance of trade, and was more wide-spread. It allowed for the development of areas, such as Gujurat, and other water systems, such as The Yamuna-Ganga systems by being included in the ever expanding trade-routes. [Kenoyer].

Other smaller cities and villages around the Indus region demised simply because of a shift in the direction of the mighty river, causing most river beds to simply dry out completely. This left agricultural development in the pits. People had to move east. Besides trade, and agriculture, Indus art and craft practices were also kept alive. Pottery technology flourished, and saw more animals being included on these pots for decoration. It thus became easy to tell how far Indus culture spread and evolved. [Kenoyer].

This new tradition came to be known as the Indo-Gangetic tradition, a very valuable link which has determined the course of history through-out the sub-continent, and still defines the culture of these two regions today. This link marked a new level of development for the settling communities by 300 B.C.E. However, it was a new kind of development which saw the rise of small city-states run by monarchies, armies, metal weapons used for combat, horse-drawn chariots instead of ox-pulled ones, and of course, politics became the game of power.

The Indo-Gangetic link unarguably defines the main-stream cultural atmosphere of Pakistan today. It is intrinsically a territorial link; the people of the Indus River established it with the Ganga River, out of the sheer human instinct to survive. The Indus valley civilization did not demise in entirety. It lost a part of itself in the form of the city of Mohenjo-daro, as well as smaller cities in the south, and Gulf trade along the Makran coast. But by shifting east, it gained another water system which helped develop Indus valley culture, thought, religion, and trade. The history of Indus culture is a history of territorial shift. It naturalizes the idea of diverse ethnicities, not only existing together, but inter-breeding to make new ethnicities. All this has taken place over the course of 5000 years, and in one land. To ignore this, is to ignore our fundamental cultural history. Our culture is an indigenous culture by virtue of our changing landscape. The people of the Indus influenced the Ganges River region primarily, and not vice-versa. The culture that is practiced today is the culture that has been practiced over the centuries in the Indus valley. It is safe to say that the history of the sub-continent began in the Indus region. [Research by Sonia Saleem]

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Multan Club

Importance of historical buildings is multidimensional. These buildings help us understand the people and culture that produced them. They also have architectural, aesthetic, historic, documentary, archaeological, economic, social and even symbolic values .

The first impact which any historic building gives is always an emotional one, for it is a symbol of our cultural identity, continuity and a part of our heritage. If it has survived the hazards and onslaught for "70 years (or above), it has good claim to being called historic,” says the law of land. Standing on bleared table in Multan Services Club with my old buddies, I could not help thinking of the message and a complexity of ideas that seem encircling the ornate building of the club.

During the last fifty two years, sadly, the destruction of historic buildings, urban cultural property and distortion of historic signs have occurred at an unprecedented scale. Due to the pursuit of quick profits and inordinately large returns by a few and through the indiscriminate use of valuable urban spaces and structures, many humanizing features of our cities have been irrevocably lost.

In the garb of modernization, through the use of the dreaded bulldozer, many a valuable historic and much loved buildings have been atomised by one more anonymous multi-storey structure, our city districts, once conducive to human interaction and civilizing influence, have been converted into unfriendly, concrete jungles. A fraction of the blame for the violence, increasing brutalisation of society and diminishing respect for human values and human life -- witnessed in the last couple of decades -- must be laid at the door of today's harsh and anonymous environment of our cities. An example of the "misuse" of city space: once upon a time there were eight mango orchards within the municipal limits of Multan. Today, there is none.

But the spanking new look of the old building of Multan Services Club is one of the finest example of the heritage conservation, technical expertise of the architects and devotion of the users to keep the symbol of our past in its original shape.

The Services Club, standing in wide and lush green lawns, looks straight out of the storybook. The building is a strange combination of horizontal emphasis and curvatures: surprisingly original in style. Four sizes of domes have been used. One in the centre of the plan being the largest and the ones set between the cluster of five domes the smallest. Two domes set on the corners of front are larger than the smallest ones but smaller than the other two sizes. The domes seem to have been influenced by Buddhist stupas. Largest dome has lantern like kiosk, painted in red, in place of a pinnacle.

Amir of Bahawalpur got this edifice built in late nineteenth century as a symbol of his entry into the city of Multan. The structure originally was a classic baradari. In the well-lit and airy interior, at least two successive Amirs of Bahawalpur would have spent their time: getting the glimpse of Multan through its windows while contemplating their strategic move to consolidate their gains.

Early in the 1920s, one of the well-established Multani family owned the building before it was acquired by the British army for use as Officers Club for the new founded Multan Cantonment, the role that the building is serving till today. Only the passing years kept changing the face of this gem in the history of Multan. The British officers, oblivious of the heritage of one of the oldest living city of the world, added an ungraceful hall on one side of the building to serve as a dance chamber and bar. Moreover, repairs that took place in those days were of the makeshift type, without any attention to the conservation of the structure. Cracks were merely hidden, and dampness coated with whitewash.

In the past few decades, ground water began eating at the foundations of this splendid building. This was compounded by cracks in the domes that started collecting rainwater. Owing to these cracks, the outer walls also began to slant outward, splitting the roof of the verandahs.

After deliberate planning (series of presentations and briefings), the task of conservation was given to Mr. and Mrs. Qurashi; Lahore based architects who were then completing their assignment of Multan Arts Council. They did a fine job using original material of the building and keeping it in its actual shape as far as possible. The architects have certainly added years to the life of this historic building, which is serving as a very restful facility.

One sincerely wishes, that the Auqaf Department, Archaeology Department, city development agencies and modern developers all over the country start appreciating the importance of national heritage. Only then they can plan to conserve bits and pieces of our history we are poised to loose forever. All is not lost still. Though, this has not started happening yet.

Hellenistic and Parthian Gandhara

Pervaiz Munir Alvi

Pakistan is home to the ancient Gandhara Civilization. Its Buddhist character, which this civilization is best known for, was first established in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when colonial British military men and archeologists discovered various ancient religious sites near the city of Taxila in the Potowar region of Pakistan.

However since independence of Pakistan, the late 20th century studies and research conducted both by the Pakistani and Western scholars have documented and confirmed that Gandhara Civilization was not always Buddhist in character but had also gone through some well defined Hellenistic and Parthian periods as well.

The Hellenistic period of Gandhara starts with the arrival of Alexander the Great of Macedonia in 329 B.C. After conquering Taxila in 327 B.C. he remained in the areas now constituting Pakistan for another two years until his return via Indus Valley, Arabian Sea and Makran Coast also in Pakistan.

The ancient Gandhara proper consisting of the Peshawar Basin of Kabul River and Upper Indus Valley, along with the sister communities of Udayana in Swat, Pakistan and Bactria in north east Afghanistan has come to be known as the Greater Gandhara. Prior to the Greek arrival, thanks to its location on the now famous Silk Road, the area had already become one of the economically most prosperous regions of the world. But the

Greek conquest brought such significant cultural, economical, political and religious changes to the Greater Gandhara region that historians and anthropologists are now more than ever inclined to call the three subsequent centuries following the Alexandrian invasion as Hellenistic (330 B.C.-129 B.C.) and Parthian (247 B.C.-224 A.D.) periods of today’s Pakistan and Afghanistan.

As a result of the Greek conquest politically the region became part of the Alexandrian  Empire stretching from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indus Basin. Before his return Alexander installed his various generals as local kings of the conquered territories. A string of kingdoms were established from one end to the other end of the empire even though Alexander who died in year 323 B.C. did not live long enough to taste the fruits of his exploits. Soon after his death, a local upstart of humble origin named Chandra Gupta Maurya was able to set up a kingdom in the Indus Valley. Seleucus, a general of Alexander, unsuccessfully tried to win back the lost territories (306/305 B.C.) but the counterattacks of the Mauryans forced the Greeks to retreat towards Bactria. Later his grandson Ashoka stretched the empire from Afghanistan to Bengal with Pataliputra

(Putna, India) as its capital. Ashoka converted to Buddhism and under his patronage Taxila gained further prominence. But the Mauryan empire died with Ashoka in 231 B.C. and Greeks under the leadership of Demetrius made a come back to reclaim Greater Gandhara.

Economically the Alexandrian invasion brought trade routes from the Eastern Mediterranean to Gandhara-the gateway to China-under Greek control. The most significant change was the opening of a second trade route. Sea ports like Alexandria, Egypt and Barbarikon near Karachi, Pakistan became important economic hubs. Under Greek protection commercial ships from Alexandria via the Nile River, Red Sea, Arabian Sea and lower Indus River would travel all the way up to the present day city of Multan, Pakistan with goods en route to China; further adding to the prosperity of the Greater Gandhara.

Culturally and religiously the Greek arrival added one more layer to the Gandharan diversity. Even though under Ashoka Buddhism had officially arrived in Gandhara, but still with the exception of monasteries and rock edicts commissioned by him, there have been no discoveries of Buddhist iconology as symbols of popular religion of that period. On the other hand the popular artifacts discovered from various sites near Taxila, and identified as belonging to the period between 3rd. century B.C. and 1st. century A.D., show Hellenistic and Parthian but not Buddhist characters. 

These carved stone pieces such as dishes and slabs, statuettes and other objects were made of schist, phyllite and steatite and are now part of a larger Samuel Eilenberg Collection housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Carved Greek mythical gods such as Apollo, Aphrodite, Daphne; characters such as wrestler Heracles and Nemean lion; symbols such as floral wreaths and grape wines regularly appear in these objects. The Buddhist icons discovered from ancient Gandhara sites, under latest studies are now dated as belonging to the post Greek and Parthian 1st century A.D. and later periods.

Greek period is marked by the distinct Hellenistic styles of town planning, western art and architecture, coinage and iconology, Greek language and personal drapery. From Greeks the political control of Greater Gandhara successively passed on to the Shakas, Parthians and Scythians. Parthians who had established a vast Second Persian empire stretched from Caspian Sea in the north, Mesopotamia in the west and Indus in the east considered Greater Gandhara as their domain and essential to their control of East-West trading routes. In the Mediterranean region the political power had passed on to the Romans. Even though Parthians and Romans continuously fought with each other, together the two empires controlled the land and sea trade routes between Europe and China. Under Parthian rule the Greek style and symbolism in Gandharan artifacts

gradually fades out and is replaced by the Parthian cultural influence.

First century A.D. marks the end of Hellenistic and Parthian periods of Greater Gandhara. Kushans, a nomadic tribe from Central Asia took control of Greater Gandhara and Indus Basin and then marched on to the Ganges Valley in North India. Kushans unlike Greeks and Parthians patronized Buddhism originating from the Ganges Valley as the state religion and thus set in the Buddhist period of Greater Gandhara that lasted until 6th and 8th centuries A.D. in present day Pakistan and Afghanistan respectively.

References:

(1) The Art of Gandhara in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 2007

Curator and Author, Kurt A. Behrendt.

(2) Pakistan; Oxford University Press, 1997

Gandhara Culture; Professor J.E. van Lohuizen de Leeuw

The Kushan Era; Professor Ahmad Hasan Dani

The World Heritage

International travelers can add a few more places to their must-see list.

UNESCO named 21 new World Heritage Sites at its annual meeting in Brazil this week, raising the total of earth's most important cultural and/or natural locations to 911 - at least according to the nominating committee.

Among the new sites designated by UNESCO (United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and located in or near the U.S. are the prehistoric caves of Mitla and Yagul in Oaxaca, Mexico, and the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (Royal Road of the Interior Land), a 400-mile old trade route running through New Mexico, Texas and Mexico that is part of the U.S. National Historic Trail system.

Hawaii's Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, known for its coral reefs and ancient shrines, made the cut as both a cultural and natural site.

Being designated a World Heritage Site is no empty honor. A UNESCO site can be a natural wonder or a man-made structure - from a building to a city - deemed to be of major significance to history and humanity. They're not only a prime destination for intrepid world travelers - locations considered to be endangered can receive preservation funding from the organization.

The four sites deemed endangered this year includes Florida's Everglades National Park, which was named because much of its water is being diverted to cities, according to AP. The Everglades was also on the endangered list from 1993 to 2007.

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A long-deserted bunker built for observing atom-bomb tests near Bikini Atoll.

According to AP, UNESCO's newest cultural sites include the 17th-century canal district in Amsterdam; the 16th-century Sao Francisco Square in Sao Cristovao, Brazil; an astronomical observatory in Jantar Mantar, India; and even 11 penal colonies in Australia that housed thousands of convicts in the 18th and 19th centuries, when Oz was just a British colony.

Some of the natural sites added this year are Piton de la Fournaise (Peak of the Furnace), a volcano in the Indian Ocean. Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific and where the U.S. conducted atom-bomb tests in the 1940s, was named a World Heritage Site because of its historical significance as the place where the nuclear age was born.

Of the 911 sites on the list, 704 are cultural, 180 are natural and 27 are considered to be both. Via