Fwd: Charsadda: the lotus city

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gandhara , " yashwant0k " <yashwant0k wrote:

 

 

By Fidaullah Sehrai

 

 

PUSHKALAVATI meaning the Lotus City in Sanskrit was the earliest

capital of Gandhara. The Lotus city has been identified with the

region we now know as Charsadda and its neighborhood.

 

According to Ramayana, Gandhara was conquered by Bharata, the son of

Kaikayi and younger brother of Rama who founded the city of

Pushkalavati and installed his son Pushkala as its ruler.

 

Pushkalavati stood on the banks of the Jinde, a channel of the Swat

River. It was a great centre of education, art, culture, religion

and politics. Teachers and students came from all over India to

teach and study here. In Hindu, Greek, Buddhist and Chinese texts as

an important city in the north. However, its palaces, forts,

temples, stupas and monasteries were destroyed after the invasions

of the White Huns in AD-530-40.

 

The city had a long history even before the rise of the Mauryas and

even before the birth of the Buddha. The city became popular among

the people of mid-India (Madhya-desa) also because it was the seat

of scholars of all classes. They came to Pushkalavati to receive

instructions in the three Vedas and the eighteen branches of

knowledge. Force of Alexander the Great captured Pushkalavati and

established a Macedonian garrison under Philippos. Asoka (273- 236

BC) introduced Buddhism to Gandhara, constructed many stupas in

memory of the Buddha and appointed his seal Kunala as the ruler of

Pushkalavati.

 

The Buddha never physically came to Gandhara, but visited it

spiritually on many occa- sions as revealed by the Buddhist texts.

Thus Gandhara became a second holy land for the Buddhists who came

from all over India, China and Korea for pilgrimage. This fact is

fully revealed in the Chinese Buddhist texts.

 

The environs of Pushkalavati are famous for Syama Jataka, in which

the Buddha was born as Syama the obedient son who supported his

blind parents. While drawing water from a well in the forest, he was

struck by the arrow of a king who had gone out to hunt deer. Later

the dead Syama was miraculously restored to life. Hiuen Tsang, the

Chinese pilgrim, informs us that Asoka built a stupa at the place,

which has been identified with Periano dheri mound near the village

of Ganderi at a distance of ten miles from Pushkalavati. He further

added that there was a Brahmanical temple outside the western gate

of Pushkalavati and also a stupa built by Asoka, where the four

former Buddhas had preached law. Vasumitra, the great scholar of the

sastras composed famous Buddhist texts at Pushkalavati.

 

The Buddhist legends reveal that the Buddha was also the King of

Gandhara who was born a thousand times to rule from Pushkalavati.

Fahien, the Chinese pilgrim who visited Pushakalava in AD 400, tells

us that there were four great stupas in the north. They were

constructed by Asoka at those places where the Buddha Had sacrificed

or gifted his eyes, head, body and flesh respectively. The stupa of

the head gift was at Taxila, body at Mankyala, flesh in Buner and

eyes at Pushkalavati now Bala Hiseer.

 

There was another famous stupa of Hariti in the north- west of

Pushkalavati. Hariti was the mother of the demons and the ogress who

used to devour the children of Rajgir. Her husband was Panchika, the

God of Wealth. To teach her a lesson, Buddha hid the best beloved of

her five hundred sons under his begging bowl. She wandered

distractedly searching for him. Thus said the Buddha, " Though art

heart-broken, because of one lost son among five hundred: how much

more grieved must they be who by the deeds have lost all their off-

spring? " Thereupon she was immediately converted. The location of

the conversion was not in Rajgir in India but near the village of

Rajar close to Charsadda. She became the goddess of fertility and

also had [he power to cure children suffering from small-pox or

measles and to bestow children on the childless. She has been

immortalised in stone and sits with her husband surrounded by her

children in Gandhara art.

 

The concept of mother goddess prevailed in the ancient

civilizations. Like the Indus Valley, it existed in Gandhara also

where thousands of mother goddesses in terra-cotta have been

recovered from the mounds of Bala Hissar, Charsadda, Sardheri Rajar,

Shaikhan Dheri and others. Shaikhan Dheri near Rajar was the second

city of Puskhalavati and was excavated by Professor A.H. Dani. The

belief in mother goddess remained in vogue for many centuries in

Pushkalavati.

 

The lotus, a flower of river, steams, swamps, lakes, ponds, marshes

and mud, which grows abundantly around Charsadda. It dominated the

mind of the people of Pushkalavati to such an extent that they

created a goddess for their city named in the ancient coins .is

Pukhlavadi-devada meaning " City Goddess of Pushkalavati. "

 

Besides the concepts of the mother goddess and the goddess of

fertility, there also prevailed a belief in the city goddess among

the citizens Pushkalavati. Taxila in Punjab and Kapisa in

Afghanistan also had their city goddesses. The city goddess of

Pushkalavati the coins on the obverse, wears a mural crown and hold

a lotus in her right and on the reverse an Indian bull. The cult of

such goddesses became widespread between the third century BC and

first century AD. City goddesses were probably as much protective

deities as maintainers of luck a prosperity which they bestowed upon

the kings a people of those cities. The lotus flower is fully

utilized the religious and secular scenes as well as being a

decorative clement in Gandhara art. It is repeated on the wooden

doors and pillars in the traditional architecture of Pukhton houses

in the far-flung villages even today, and is also carved on

gravestones. The flower travelled from Pushkalavati and reach every

house in Gandhara hundreds of years ago.

 

The importance of Puskhalavati started declining when emperor

Kanishka shifted the capital to Peshawar AD 78. It was not abandon'

totally but was still an important city of the Kushan empire created

by Kanishka. The old city is dead at buried in mounds, but the lotus

flowers are still there in ponds and rivers to mourn its death.

Charsadda has arisen from the mud of the old city like a lotus

flower from the pond, which is now the third city of Pushkalavati.

 

 

 

http://www.peshawar1.com/htmls/gandhara/gandhara03.html

 

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