There has been a tendency to treat the history of Gandhara separately from the mainstream history of the Indian subcontinent, and in particular to see the region as solely Buddhist until the arrival of Islam, underplaying the presence of Brahmanism/Hinduism. Brahmanical elements were significant in ancient Gandhara, and a vigorous Hindu resurgence occurred in “greater Gandhara” between the seventh and eleventh centuries under the Turk Sahis, ruling from Kapasi (Kabul) and Hund, and the Hindu or Udi Sahis of Hund. Of the hundreds of temples from this period that must once have peppered the region, clusters survive in the North-West Frontier and Punjab Provinces of Pakistan, along the Indus and in the Salt Range.
Largely built of coarse kanjar stone blocks, these works belong in broad terms to the northern Indian, Nagara tradition of temple architecture. At an early stage some are of the phamsana kind—crowned by layers of moulded eaves; some, with miniature pavilions in their towers, seem to presage the formative stages of the curved latina spire. Fully formed Latina shrines make up the majority, while a few later examples show the renewed proliferation of elements that, elsewhere, leads to the composite sekhari form. At the same time, this regional tradition has peculiarities that derive from ancient Gandhara. Corinthianesque pilasters persist over a long period, and temples may be raised on platforms, traceable back to early Gandharan stupa bases. Interestingly, many of the domes over cellas and porches are of voussoir or “true arch” construction, set on squinches, a technique that has conventionally been thought of as post-Islamic.
The Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture, of which Michael Meister was the original editor, devotes only a brief chapter with poor photographs to these “Gandhara Nagara” monuments,Footnote 6 as Meister has termed them. This book aims to integrate these works into the body of knowledge that the Encyclopaedia represents. It consolidates research that the author has published in articles during several years of field study in collaboration with Abdur Rehman and other Pakistani archaeologists.
The volume begins with a survey of previous archaeological discussion of the sites, notably by Alexander Cunningham in the 1870s and 80s, and Aurel Stein early in the twentieth century. The second chapter is the core one; after a brief historical background it surveys one by one the bulk of the monuments, grouped into three phases. Chapter 3 gives an account of the recent excavations at the fortress site of Kafirkot, analyses a three-faced image found there, and discusses the complex dating of platform extensions met with at several sites. Chapter 4, “Original Variations in Tenth-Century Architecture,” deals first with a ruined brick temple at Pattan Munara near the distant Cholisthan Desert, linkable to the focus of the book by virtue of its arcuated dome construction. Returning to the Indus and Salt Range, three temples are discussed which playfully combine Nagara shrine forms with the pent roof type typical of Kashmir, by projecting an image of one type out of the body of the other. The final chapter, “Archaeology and Ethnography,” to gain a better understanding of the “archaeological layering” of sites no longer inhabited, draws parallels with another project in which Meister has participated, examining changing and contested patronage at ancient, living temples in Rajasthan.
A constant theme of the book is the place of these temples in the formation and development of Nagara architecture, especially in the latina form which, for Meister, is “the preeminent accomplishment of Indic architecture” (p. 8). Gandhara is remote from the Gangetic basin (Madhyadesha), the original heartland of the Nagara, yet exhibits a series of its developmental stages across the centuries. These include apparently formative ones, comparable to early Nagara shrines in other regions, including Saurashtra, which Meister tentatively suggests may point to connections. A crucial question, not explicitly posed here, is the extent to which “morphological” developments happen through contact and influence, as opposed to the logic of the formal system linked to a particular process of design. In this region there were clearly moments of direct contact with mainstream Nagara traditions; and greater geographical continuity than we now imagine must once have been provided by brick temples spread across the Punjab, long since lost. Yet the stages of coalescence of miniature pavilions in the tower, the progressive stepping forward of the wall, the proliferation and varied weaving of horseshoe-arch motifs (gavaksas), and the renewed multiplication of shrine-images as primary components, cannot have waited for instructions from the centre for every pulse of their blossoming. The full picture is still unclear, but a previously hazy passage has been brought into focus by this volume.
Presentation of the temples the main survey chapter follows a convincing chronology, but an overview of the evolution and a consistent ascription of dates is withheld until the end of the chapter. The illustrations do not help us here, as they are not arranged in an easily graspable order. And the photographs are frustratingly small. Despite these obstacles, this is an important study. It may not, as suggested more than once, reveal a “missing link” in the development of Nagara temple architecture, but it certainly adds a new chapter to the story.
