Exploring the oldest Gandhara stupa in the Swat Valley (Amluk-Dara)
We explored one of the oldest of these stupas located in Amluk-Dara next to the Elum Ghar mountain. Here is a detailed description of it.
Once rising almost as high as the Pantheon in Rome, the large stupa of Amluk-Dara in the Swat valley, Pakistan, is an imposing building. Yet, it is only one among many such Buddhist structures built in Udyāna, a garden kingdom along the Silk Road.
Owing to its position connecting Northern India through mountainous Central Asia with the kingdoms and empires beyond, this was a strategic area (much as Afghanistan is today).
It often served as the border of larger empires, with rulers based in proto-India failing to expand north from here over the mountains and rulers from north of the mountains failing to expand further south from here into the plains of India.
However, one of the early invaders came from much further afield. Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) fought famous battles here during his Central Asian campaigns. His army marched east from Alexandria in the Caucasus (Bagram) — the city he had founded in the Kingdom of Kapisa — and fought many battles to gain control of the region.
Some of these were in the Swat Valley and culminated with Alexander the Great’s successful siege of Aornos, a seemingly impregnable steep-sided mountain with a flat top watered by a spring where locals had taken refuge.
Identifying the site of this ancient battle has occupied scholars for well over a century, but two places stand out as the most probable candidates. Pir Sar, a mountain rising west of the Indus Valley, was selected by the archeologist Aurel Stein (1862–1943) after his survey of the region in 1926.
However, although this is not rejected by all, the consensus now veers toward Mount Elum, the summit of which is a day’s walk from the Amluk-Dara Stupa.
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