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Heritage site: Exploring final vestiges of ancient Buddhist monastery
- Updated: August 25, 2016
The hull of a Buddhist nunnery in Takht Bhai in Mardan. PHOTO: EXPRESS
PESHAWAR: The hull of Takht Bhai, ‘spring on a hilly ridge’, do not destroy to intruigued anyone who visits. Apart from a abounding enlightenment and birthright that is recorded during a site, a threads of misconceptions woven around a Buddhist monastery, offer mixed narratives and accounts of a story of a place.
Situated on a Mardan-Swat Road, around 13 kilometres north of Peshawar, a Takht Bhai hull date behind to a 2nd century BC. It was excavated in 1836 and was announced a universe birthright site by Unesco in 1980.
Sifting by accounts
Every internal narrates his or her chronicle of a chronological contribution about Takht Bhai.
“The hull had subterraneous waterways that were assembled to yield H2O from springs to a people vital on a hills,” a internal told The Express Tribune.
“A aristocrat would lay on a large bench in a center of these hull and bread and dishes would be prepared for him during a bottom of a site,” another internal said.
Encounters with some-more people usually supplement to a abounding tales a segment has combined about a site.
According to archaeologists, a hull of Takht Bhai were initial excavated in 1836. At slightest 270 sculptures—220 done of clay, mortar and terracotta—reflecting formidable iconography have been detected and displayed during Peshawar Museum. Archaeologists trust Takht Bhai was a vital ancient Buddhist nunnery complex.
“These monasteries date behind to a power of Parthian King Gondophares who took a penetrating seductiveness in religion,” an central of a archaeology dialect told The Express Tribune.
The dialect officials explained that Takht Bhai was built 500 feet above a belligerent on a side of mountain. It is one of a 60 monasteries that were assembled on joining ridges in a area.
“Since a site served as a eremite ground, pilgrims from China and a Subcontinent would revisit a area until it was shop-worn by a Hans of Central Asia,” one of a officials said. He combined given Takht Bhai was situated on a tip of a mountain, it could not be destroyed.
From a tip of a mountain, a breathtaking perspective of plains fluctuating from Malakand Pass to a Hindu Kush alpine range, can be seen.
Need to quell vandalism
Muhammad Usman Mardanvi, an archaeologist from Mardan, told The Express Tribune a site indispensable to be recorded more.
“Originally, a monasteries were multi-storey structures with a required settlement of a categorical stupa surrounded by tiny extrinsic ones,” he said, adding, stupas were detailed with narratives. “There were chapels, subterraneous imagining centres and several H2O channels that exhibit how systematic constructions of that epoch were,” he said.
The archaeologist also pronounced Takht Bhai was done in a approach that would forestall drop from seismic activity. “However, today, visitors stand walls, baloney on them and have discharged a fact that a site is in fact a building of ancestral importance.
“It is banned to even blemish a walls though people have scribbled on them,” Mardanvi lamented. He pronounced there needs to be a clever check on visitors who were unknowingly of a stress of a ruins.
“People come to a site for picnics – they cook, spawn and repairs a area,” he said.
Gearing up
The Directorate of Archaeology and Museums has been creation three-dimensional videos to strengthen a site for destiny generations and attract tourists from within and outward a country.
“The income generated from general tourists is skinny notwithstanding a fact that law and sequence conditions in a range has improved,” Mardanvi said.
He combined Mardan was a ‘land of Gandhara’ and was a heart of a ancient civilisation. “Besides Takht Bhai, there are several critical sites in a area, including, Sehri Bahlol, Shahbaz Garhi, Jamal Garhi, Sawal Dher, Chanakai Dheri and Aziz Dheri.” He pronounced Mardan should follow a instance of Malakand Division and lift transport restrictions so that tourists could knowledge a different enlightenment and story of a areas.
Published in The Express Tribune, Aug 26th, 2016.