Gandhara (the land of fragrance and beauty) is the name of the area to the west of the Indus and north of Kabul rivers and includes the valleys of Peshawar, Swat, Dir, Bajaur, extending westwards to southern Afghanistan and the Taxila valley in Punjab.
Huien Tsang, the celebrated Chinese pilgrim who visited Gandhara in the early 7th. Century CE, wrote that the large tract of land on the west bank of the Indus and to the north of the Kabul rivers which included the Peshawar valley and the modern Swat, Buner and Bajaur formed Kingdom of Gandhara.
Gandhara, the famous cradle of Buddhist art, is first mentioned in the Rig Veda, the religious book of the Aryans. It remained one of the provinces of the Achaemenian Empire as per the Darius inscription of 6th Century BCE. Rushkalavati (Balahisar-Charisadda) was its first capital from the sixth century BCE. to the first century CE. Alexander the Great invaded it in 327BCE.
When the Buddha passed away they mourned his loss and worked to keep his memory alive. They gathered his ashes after the cremation and took them to various sites where they built stupas (chetiyas) also known as spectral monks.
So good were their building techniques that the structures remained unbroken over the centuries. These stupas were an integral part of the Gandhara tradition. Some were located inside monasteries by devotees.
Other most enormous structures, were erected over his remains. At Dir, Swat and Takht-i-Bahi the monks lived in an ambience of peace and seclusion, meditating and contemplating the teachings of the Buddha.
Remains of these great monasteries and stupas can still be seen today, but people do not know what they are or of the wisdom and culture that has been eliminated.
For example, the great pagoda over-looking Kabul towered high in the sky. It had been built on the top of a great hill and itself was a lofty structure of about fifty feet tall.
It originally contained beautiful gold statues of the Buddha each looking out on the four cardinal points of the compass. It would all have been capped by a gilded copper canopy reaching another 50 feet high into the sky
making it a most spectacular sight.
The Buddha statues looked out on magnificent views overlooking the hills and peaks and into the horizon. They were wishing the entire world peace, compassion and wisdom.
From Ceylon Daily Mirror February 2, 2007
Remember the Carpets!
Afghan carpets are highly prized and a big carpet can cost a very big amount of money.* – And they are very beautiful – both to feel because of their soft materials (Kashmir goat?), and see because the colours and patterns were/are very beautiful. They have bordering along the four sides and have a ‘central motif’ or ‘medallion’ as the dealers call it.
An explanation is needed. Before the arrival of Muslims the people of Afghanistan were Buddhist and the carpets were made by Buddhist women. At that time all the carpets had woven into them a central pattern called a MANDALA. The carpets had around their sides or borders beautiful linear patterns or motifs.
The carpets were used for Buddhist meditation purposes as well as used as decoration and keeping the house warm.
But present day carpets have a central motif which is a meaningless Islamic pattern with equally meaningless borders.
To purchase the original Buddhist carpets in the antique carpet markets is very difficult as these oldest carpets are extremely rare and expensive; and even one may not be found to buy. The buyers of these original carpets are mostly the rich Art Galleries from the west.
(*That is partly because, to make the knots small fingers are needed. If the young girls doing this work continue for more than a few months, eventually their eyesight becomes damaged.)
PH. 2007
Republished by P.H 2023