Michael W. Meister
High above the mighty Indus, on hills commonly called the
Salt Range, stand important remains of forts with citadels and temples
(Fig. 1). Built from the 6th to the 11th centuries AD, these structures
lie in what was ancient India's far northwest (Fig. 3), now in the Panjab
and North West Frontier provinces of Pakistan. Largely ignored by scholars
in this century, and orphaned from the main stream of architectural scholarship
since the partition of South Asia in 1947, these remains form an important
link in the history of South Asian architecture. Remarkably, this region
preserves an almost continuous record of temples that can define the evolution
of a distinctive school of Gandhara-Nagara architecture. An integrated
archaeological study of these sites, undertaken by the author with colleagues
in Peshawar, has begun to reveal new aspects of this important period of
South Asia's antiquity. What follows is a preliminary report and stylistic
analysis of the region's temples.
Archaeologically, the area is best known for the massive numbers
of Buddhist sculptural and structural remains associated with the region
of Gandhara from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD. These Gandharan
remains already show a local visual vocabulary in which architectural traditions
from India, Central Asia, and the classical world appear side by side.
This mélange of traditions is evident on many Gandharan Buddhist
narrative steles, as well as monuments such as the famous shrine of the
double-headed eagle and the Dharmarajika stupa at Taxila (Fig. 2).
The Chinese pilgrim, Hsüan Tsang, visiting Gandhara in the
7th century AD, noted hundreds of Hindu structures along with many Buddhist
sites then in decline (Watters 1904-05). If there is a Gandharan legacy
in the Hindu temple architecture of subsequent centuries, it takes two
paths: one, a unique tradition of temples with pyramidal roofs built in
Kashmir from before the reign of Lalitaditya in the 8th century AD (Fig.
5), the other an independent tradition in Gandhara itself. Our project
focuses on the consequences of this second tradition.
We find perhaps the earliest example of the Kashmir tradition
in two small 8th-century (or earlier) temples at Laduv (Meister et al.
1988 [hereafter EITA]: 361-63) and of temples related to the second tradition
in several 6th-century masonry sub-shrines at the Hindu pilgrimage site
of Katas in the Salt Range (Fig. 6). The square Laduv shrine has a circular
interior space and had a hemispherical dome under a peaked roof, for which
a Gandharan prototype-a masonry structure at Guniar in Swat-is sometimes
cited (Kak 1933:55-56; EITA:362). The whole was once covered by a pyramidal
roof, as indicated by the frame surrounding its doorway. Gandharan antecedents
for this type can be seen in the "classical" niche pediments represented
on the 1st century BC shrine of the double-headed eagle at Taxila, or the
split pyramidal pediments in Gandharan sculpture and on stupas such as
that shown in Figure 2. This distinctive gabled pent roof became the signature
for Lalitaditya's powerful Kashmir dynasty in the 8th century. Well-preserved
examples, from the 8th to 10th centuries, survive on temples at Narastan,
Pandrethan (Fig. 5), and Payar.
The type of temple found at Katas, while sharing with Laduv the
formula of a simple square plan, plain masonry walls, and cantoned corner
pilasters, formed its superstructure by quite different means. The Katas
sub-shrine's elevation can be reconstructed as a series of cornices with
tiny intermediate rows of pillars and a crowning ribbed stone (amalaka)
(Fig. 6). This early type of simply storied structure has parallels in
coastal western India at Sarnath (Saurashtra) and elsewhere across northern
India and the Deccan in the 6th century AD (see Meister 1986; EITA).
With its representation of many multiple stories, the Katas sub-shrine
can be considered a type of proto-Nagara tower. However, local experimentation
with the full Nagara formula-the typical curved temple form of northern
India-had already begun at Kafirkot ("foreigners' fortress" in local parlance)
west of the Indus in the North West Frontier Province (see Figs. 7, 8).
The two earliest temples in this fort can most closely be related to early
Garulaka or Maitraka dynasty temples in Saurashtra at sites like Bhanasara
and Dhank, from the 6th and early 7th centuries AD, and Saindhava dynasty
temples from the same region in the 8th century (see EITA: plates). Even
the name of the little understood Saindhava dynasty seems to indicate a
link with the Indus (Sindhu is an ancient name for the river).
STYLISTIC SOURCES FOR THE SALT RANGE TEMPLES
Scholars have tended to date this whole group of temples now
in Pakistan to "post Islamic contact," that is, after the 7th to 8th century
AD, because of their use of mortar, rubble-fill between masonry walls,
arches, and squinched interior domes (Archaeological Survey of India Annual
Report 1920-21:6-7). They have also tended to locate them as a branch of
Kashmiri architecture, because of one aberrant temple (Fig. 4). Both Percy
Brown (1942) and James Harle (1986), for example, in their volumes
on Indian architecture, place the Salt Range temples in chapters on the
Kashmiri tradition.
Nineteenth and early 20th century scholars, including Aurel Stein
(1937), Alexander Cunningham (1872-73), and Ananda Coomaraswamy (1927),
focused their attention on the 10th-century temple at Malot in the Salt
Range (Fig. 4) and its formal links to the architecture of Kashmir, thus
setting the direction for later scholarship. The temple at Malot does indeed
mimic pent-roofed temples in Kashmir at a time of marital alliance between
the Utpalas of Kashmir and the Hindu Shahi kings of Hund in Gandhara (Rehman
1979). It differs from the Kashmir temples, however, in placing the curvilinear
Nagara shrine models on its walls (see box on Shrine Models). These shrine
models mimic local Gandhara-Nagara temples at other 10th-century Hindu
Shahi sites, such as a pair of temples in a second important fortress,
Bilot (south Kafirkot), near Dera Ismail Khan (Figs. 1, 17).
The Kashmiri form found at Malot, however, is an exception. Better
sources for this Indus group of temples can be found in the Gandharan substrata
and in the ferment of Nagara formation in other areas of north and western
India (Meister 1981) than in Kashmir. Whether in the domed Buddhist compounds
at Takht-i-bahi or the 5th-century moldings facing the Dharmarajika stupa
at Taxila (Fig. 2), Gandharan antecedents are close at hand. Certainly
the basic molding sequence of Gandhara-Nagara temples begins as early as
Taxila. The typical slender pseudo-Corinthian pilasters at Kafirkot (Fig.
10)-as well as true arches-can be seen also on the 2nd/4th-century Buddhist
stupa at Guldhara in Afghanistan (Harle 1986:73). The characteristic sloping
batter of niches and doorways (and sometimes walls) on these temples has
clear antecedents in Gandharan conventions. Much of the architectural ornament
in these temples is familiar to the Gandhara region and even the use of
interior squinches and masonry domes is not new.
What is new to the region is the Nagara modality of superstructure
as it had developed in north India for the first time in the 5th and 6th
centuries AD (Meister 1986, 1989). The shrine model on the wall of temple
D at Bilot (Fig. A in box on Shrine Models) bears close resemblance to
the much better known proto-Nagara shrine model represented on the early
6th-century doorway to the "Gupta" temple at Deogarh in central India,
for example, or one on a brick stupa base at Nalanda in eastern India (Meister
1986:46-47).
A WALK THROUGH THE SALT RANGE TEMPLES
To frame this local and continuous craft tradition of the Salt
Range and upper Indus, let me briefly review the remains in chronological
order. At north Kafirkot (Fig. 7), temples B and A represent the earliest
experiments in this region with the developing Nagara formula (Fig. 8).
At Bilot (south Kafirkot) the much larger temple D awkwardly formulates
a Nagara tower on a square base, much like the pre-Nagara temple at Bilesvara
in Saurashtra in the 7th century (EITA:181-84), and incorporates a model
of a proto-Nagara shrine on its walls (Fig. A in box on Shrine Models).
Late in the 7th century, temple C at Kafirkot (Fig. 10) and temple A at
Bilot (Fig. 11), both with damaged Nagara towers, project one central offset
on each wall and modulate ornamental elements of their superstructures
in a more integrated way compared to Bilot temple D (Fig. 9). These temples
display a new confidence in and knowledge of Nagara formulas. Temple C
tentatively introduces for the first time a version of north India's common
vase-and-foliage capital for its corner pilasters, while retaining the
local neo-Corinthian type for the central offset.
Two striking temples, located on hills east of the Indus opposite
Kalabagh at Mari-Indus-which I would date in the 8th century-continue and
refine this local Nagara tradition, but still with only a single central
offset on their walls (Fig. 12). Temple A places thin pilasters on the
corners of each offset, while temple B pairs pilasters for the first time
on its corner buttresses (Fig. 13). Temples in this sequence in turn seem
to provide a central shrine model on each wall to represent a slightly
earlier local experiment with the formula for a Nagara temple (see box
on Shrine Models). Each also seems to carry forward some architectural
element, as in the trefoil arched niches at Bilot (Fig. 9), the trefoil
doorway at Mari-Indus, and the five-cusped entry to the smaller 9th-century
temple at Amb (Fig. 14).
The first temple in this tradition that can have its date confirmed
by any evidence other than style and decorative context is the elegant
fired brick structure at Kallar (Fig. 15). Its walls of five offsets (a
central one with two on each side), and its developed ornamentation with
vase-and-foliage pilasters and other distinctive details, place it parallel
to temples in central and western India from late in the 8th and early
in the 9th century AD. This date is supported by a single coin found near
the foundations struck in the reign of the first Hindu Shahi ruler, Kalar,
whose dynasty has recently been dated by an inscription as beginning in
AD 821 (Rehman 1993:31). Only further archaeological explorations, however,
and perhaps carbon-14 dating of wood beams used to support the interior
domes of some of these temples, can fix more firmly the dates and historical
frame suggested here.
Early in the 8th century, perhaps, sub-shrines were added above
the eastern corners of the platform supporting temple D at Bilot. These
echo but reorient two domed cells sunk into the front corners of the temple's
platform (Fig. 16). The small temple D at Kafirkot, built near the north
gateway to that fort late in the 9th century, mimics some distinctive details
of these sub-shrines.
A DISTINCTIVE NEW TURN
In the 10th century, larger temples were built under the patronage
of the Hindu Shahi kings in the spectacular fortress at Amb (Fig. 18),
at Bilot (Figs. 1, 17), and at Nandana (Fig. 19) on the eastern escarpment
of the Salt Range. Like earlier ones of the region, these still were Latina
temples (that is, they had single curvilinear spires), but within
their walls were stairways leading to an upper story where an interior
ambulatory corridor surrounded an upper chamber embedded within the tower
(Fig. 20a). In this respect they are unlike all other Nagara temples in
India.
This remarkable regional experiment with multiple levels, folded
within a Latina tower (Figs. 17, 19-20), came to an end early in the 11th
century. At that time the great fortress at Nandana on the eastern flank
of the Salt Range fell to Mahmud of Ghazni, who sought to control the significant
routes across the Panjab leading toward Multan and Delhi. The Hindu Shahi
kings then took refuge with their cousins in Kashmir. In this sequence
of Salt Range temples, only the last one, built at Nandana, suggests corner
turrets on its single-spired tower (Figs. 19, 20a). These turrets remind
us, however, of the multi-spired Nagara shrine models represented on the
walls of the 10th-century Kashmir-related temple at Malot (Fig. 4), even
as they reflect a multi-spired convention that became common in central
and western India by the 9th/10th century (EITA).
Across northern India, this multi-spired (sekhari) temple type
sets a new standard in the 11th century at such famous sites as Khajuraho
in Madhya Pradesh, but its origins lie in experiments carried out in western
India (Gujarat and Rajasthan) in the century before-experiments marked
and reflected in these late Shahi temples in the Panjab.
That these forts and temples survive along the Indus must be
a reminder to us of how untouched many of India's traditions are; of how
severely partition has truncated our understanding of South Asia's multiple
civilizations, both Islamic and Hindu; and of our task as scholars to mend
that historical wound, even as we have begun to reproblematize colonial
scholarship and its assumptions.
I end this preliminary report with a footnote to demonstrate
the mighty weight of finding a new monument in the field. At the site of
Mari, in addition to the two 8th-century temples already discussed (Fig.
12), there are also two mounds higher up the hill to the west, badly ravaged
by treasure hunters, that past reports have labeled primarily as places
of residence (Cunningham 1879; Mumtaz and Siddiq-a-Akbar 1989). These in
fact are ruins of two large temples placed on high platforms. One, Temple
C, still preserves remains of an inner sanctum and an enclosing ambulatory
wall. On the north side, this wall preserves a central niche with a distinctive
"Kashmiri-style" pent roof (Fig. E in box on Shrine Models), but the shattered
remains of the temple's superstructure suggest instead a complex multi-spired
tower with curvilinear Latina spirelets. This temple seems, in fact, to
have been almost a reverse response to the unique local experiment with
Kashmiri style found at Malot (Fig. 4), and an answer to it. Let scholars
beware.
[Box 1]
Shrine Models as Signatures of Architectural Experimentation
The architects of these temples in the Salt Range and along the
Indus knew that they were working within a variety of options. Architecture
could engage their creativity, and through their creative actions, temples
could evolve in multiple ways. They seem consciously to have left a record
of their architectural experiments by placing shrine models as niches on
the walls of many temples. These often seem to represent slightly earlier
local experiments with the formula for a Nagara temple, focusing on the
nature of the temple's superstructure. Temple D at Bilot, for example,
uses a proto-Nagara model (Fig. A). Temple B at Mari, on the other hand,
uses curvilinear Nagara models with ornamentation placed across single
cornice layers (Fig. B). In this respect the models at Mari resemble the
superstructure actually built in the 7th century for Bilot's temple D rather
than either superstructure built at Mari in the 8th century for temples
A and B (Figs. 12, 13).
On the 10th-century temple at Malot, the central shrine models
have developed curvilinear Nagara towers flanked by extra turrets (Fig.
D). Mari's remarkable temple C, on the other hand, had central niches marked
by a split pent-roof pediment framing a trefoil arch (Fig. E) that suggests
the gabled pent roof that once actually crowned the temple at Malot (Fig.
4). The trefoil-arch pattern can be seen at Bilot, Mari, Amb, and Malot
in association with either pent-roofed or curvilinear formulas (Figs. A,
C-E).
Marking temple walls with images of past architecture provides
an historical locus for architects working within a system of meaning which
sees each niche as an expansion of the temple as a whole (Meister 1993).
The rhetoric of architectural representation in South Asia more often relates
to an ahistorical rather than historical reality, yet from time to time
the two overlap (Dhaky 1977). In Gandhara sculpture, for example, the variety
of recognizable Buddha types seems sometimes to point to specific places
of pilgrimage. So also in the Salt Range, architectural experimentation
gave contemporary expression to how the minds of its architects worked
as well as providing a model of God's creation.
[Box 2]
The Integrated Salt Range and Indus Archaeological Project
The 6th to 11th century forts, temples, and archaeological sites
associated with the Turk Shahi and Hindu Shahi kings will be investigated
over the next three years by a team led by Professors Abdur Rehman, Farid
Khan, and Michael W. Meister under the auspices of the Pakistan Heritage
Society, Peshawar, with a license from the Department of Archaeology and
Museums, Government of Pakistan. Preliminary excavations have begun this
season in the fort at north Kafirkot.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Support for this project has come from the University Research Foundation
and the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, the American
Institute of Pakistan Studies, and the Lenkin Faculty Research Fund of
the History of Art Department. I would like to thank Professor Farzand
Durrani, past Vice-Chancellor of Peshawar University, for encouragement;
the Department of Archaeology, Peshawar, for early support; Dr. M. Rafique
Mughal, Director General of the Department of Archaeology and Museums,
Government of Pakistan; Shabaaz Khan, Director of the Panjab Department
of Archaeology; and especially my colleagues Professors Abdur Rehman and
Farid Khan of the Pakistan Heritage Society, with whom carrying out this
work continues to be a pleasure.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Brown, Percy
1959 [1942]. Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu). 3d rev. ed.
Coomaraswamy, Ananda K.
1927. History of Indian and Indonesian Art. New York: E. Weyhe.
Cunningham, A.
1871-82. Archaeological Survey of India, Reports. II (1871): 189; III
(1872-73): 87-88; IV (1879): 25-35; IX (1882): 34.
Dhaky, M. A.
1977. The Indian Temple Forms in Karnata Inscriptions and Architecture.
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Harle, J. C.
1986. The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent. New York:
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Ingholt, Harald
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1969. Architecture and Art Treasures in Pakistan. Karachi: Elite Publishers.
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Marshall, John H.
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1989. "Prasada as Palace: Kutina Origins of the Nagara Temple." Artibus Asiae. 49:254-80.
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Sehrai, Fidaullah
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Stein, Aurel
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[Meister - Captions]
FIG. 1. Two groups of temples in the fort at Bilot, North West Frontier Province. The paired temples in the foreground (temples B and C) are of the 10th century. The cluster in the background (temple D in the center) is of the 7th century.
FIG. 2. Fifth-century facing added to the earlier Gandharan Buddhist Dharmarajika stupa at Taxila. Moldings, niche forms, and other architectural ornament are carried over into the Hindu temple tradition that follows.
FIG. 3. Map showing the Salt Range and other regions mentioned in text.
FIG. 4. Malot, near Kalar Kahar in the Panjab Salt Range. Main temple from the southwest, ca. 10th century. The roof of this structure would have been a pyramidal pent roof in Kashmiri fashion, but the shrine models on its walls are curvilinear and multi-spired.
FIG. 5. This 10th-century temple at Pandrethan in Kashmir offers a well-preserved example of a gabled pent roof.
FIG. 6. Katas, reconstruction of the superstructure of the southern
sub-shrine. Similar reconstructions are being prepared for temples at Kafirkot
and Bilot.
Reconstruction by the author; drawing by Patrick George
FIG. 7. Site map of the fort and temples at Kafirkot.
From the Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report 1921-22: pl.
26
FIG. 8. Kafirkot, temples A and B from southeast, ca. 6th/7th century. Note the slightly battered (sloped) walls and central niche and the stepped formula for the superstructure.
FIG. 9. Bilot, temple D from the south, ca. mid-7th century. Note the simple proto-Nagara shrine model used to frame the central niche and the unlinked horizontal arrangement of its superstructure's ornament.
FIG. 10. Kafirkot, temple C, late 7th century. Here, perhaps for the first time, the walls of the temple step out, forming central offsets from an otherwise square plan.
FIG. 11. Bilot, temple A from the southwest, ca. late 7th century. This structure places framed niches at its corners, as well as on each central offset.
FIG. 12. Mari, on the east bank of the Indus near Kalabagh. Temples A and B, ca. 8th century.
FIG. 13. Mari, temple B from the south, ca. mid-8th century.
FIG. 14. Amb, near Sakesar on the southern edge of the Salt Range; temple A from the southeast, ca. 9th century. Only in this temple are an entry hall and its roof preserved.
FIG. 15. Kallar, brick temple from the south, ca. late 8th/9th century. The wall is divided into five parts, and all pilasters show a simplified vase-and-foliage patterning.
FIG. 16. Bilot, temple D and northeast sub-shrine (temple E). Temple E shows greater complexity than the central temple, both in the central offsets, with elegant false doorways, and in the complexity of the superstructure's ornamental patterning. Temple E stands above a domed chamber sunk in the temple's platform, but is oriented to the south instead of to the east (see Fig. 1).
FIG. 17. Bilot, temple C from the south, ca. mid-10th century. From the outside, this is single spired. On the inside, however, is an upper chamber and ambulatory path.
FIG. 18. Amb, temple B from the west, ca. early 10th century. British conservation early in the century has kept this three-chambered structure from collapse.
FIG. 19. Nandana fort, temple from the southwest, ca. AD 1000.
FIG. 20 a, b. Axonometric drawing and plans of the Nandana temple showing
stairway, upper ambulatory, and chamber.
Reconstruction by the author; drawing by Hasina Choudhury
[box 1 figs]
FIG. A. Bilot, temple D.
Bottom, left to right:
FIG. B. Mari, temple B.
FIG. C. Mari, temple B.
FIG. D. Malot temple.
FIG. E. Mari, temple C.