History, Classification and Analysis of Regional Styles of Narrative Reliefs: A case study of Varia Collection (Stone Sculptures) in Swat Museum

Abstract

The Swat Valley, in the north western mountainous regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as North Western Frontier Province) Pakistan, is well known to ancient and contemporaneous historians as part of the Gandhara province of the Achaemenid Empire from 6th century BCE to the invasion of Alexander the Great in 327 BCE (Vidale and Olivieri 2016:7).1 Gandhara encompassed the area located on the west bank of the Indus River and included the Peshawar Valley as well as present day Swat, Buner and Bajaur (Ali I. and Naeem 2008: 2). Swat Valley remained an identical integral part of Gandhara (Hassan 2006: 41). Chinese travelers and pilgrims visited, Swat valley in fifth century CE and narrated surviving Buddhist heritage in the region. Uddiyana, from the word of Sanskrit, called “the royal garden”. It is after the name of the river Swat that entire valley has gotten the toponym “Swat” (Olivieri 1996: 60). In later Sanskrit literature the areas of Swat is called Uddiyana (Tucci 1940). Ancient Swat Valley remained a junction of cultural, social and economical activities (Rahman 2011:22). (Fig. I.I) Swat played a strategic role, as a contact area between Central Asia and Iran on one side and the Indo Pakistani subcontinent on the other (Vidale et al. 2016). Evidence of ancient pottery and relative cultures in the regions lying between the slopes of Hindukush and those of Karakorum, emerges from Swat and Kashmir Valleys (Stacul 1974: 12). Swat Valley is one of critical threads to elucidate the emergence, evolution and development of Gandhara art, especially Buddhist art in Gandhara, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Archaeological potential and discoveries, including rock shelter at Ghalighay in Swat Valley strengthen the hypothesis that Swat Valley played a fundamental role in the evolution of Buddhist art of Gandhara (Stein 1927: 418). In 1956, Tucci came to Saidu Sharif on the famous reconnaissance, along with Francesca Bonardi and later joined by D. Faccenna and G. Gullini (Olivieri 2006: 29).