Hadda: Greek-Buddhist Archeological Site (1st c. AD)

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"Haḍḍa (Pashto: هډه‎) is a Greco-Buddhist archeological site located in the ancient region of Gandhara, near the Khyber Pass, ten kilometers south of the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan."

Click on the map to enlarge.

"Some 23,000 Greco-Buddhist sculptures, both clay and plaster, were excavated in Haḍḍa during the 1930s and the 1970s. The findings combine elements of Buddhism and Hellenism in an almost perfect Hellenistic style......Although the style of the artifacts is typical of the late Hellenistic 2nd or 1st century BC, the Haḍḍa sculptures are usually dated (although with some uncertainty), to the 1st century AD or later (i.e. one or two centuries afterward). This discrepancy might be explained by a preservation of late Hellenistic styles for a few centuries in this part of the world. However it is possible that the artifacts actually were produced in the late Hellenistic period......Given the antiquity of these sculptures and a technical refinement indicative of artists fully conversant with all the aspects of Greek sculpture, it has been suggested that Greek communities were directly involved in these realizations, and that "the area might be the cradle of incipient Buddhist sculpture in Indo-Greek style"..... John Boardman, The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity

"Hadda is 10 km south of the Kabul River...... (Kābol Rōd, also called Daryā-ye Kābol), in eastern Afghanistan and tributary of the Indus....its drainage area takes up large proportions of eastern Afghanistan with the nine provinces of Nangarhār, Kunar, Laḡmān, Lōgar, Kabul, Kāpisā, Parvān, Panjšēr, and Bāmiān.....the East flowing Kabul River, which in times past, was known as the Sita, or White River.... In the year 1900 the Russian mystic George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff traveled by raft down part of this river, as part of an expedition led by Prof. Kozlov in search of the ruins of ancient Shambhala.".......http://www.dharmafellowship.org/library/essays/uddiyana.htm

Sir Alexander Burnes Map (1834)...Click on the map to enlarge.

"Captain Sir Alexander Burnes, FRS (16 May 1805 – 2 November 1841) was a Scottish traveller and explorer....His travels continued through Afghanistan across the Hindu Kush to Bukhara (the maps and narrative which he published in England in 1834)"

"Musée Guimet:: Afghanistan: Hadda......The Buddhist monastery complex at Hadda in Eastern Afghanistan, not far from Kandahar, yielded a rich trove of sculpture and painting during the French excavations of the late 1930s......Hadda, Monastery of Bagh-Gai. 3rd-4th c. AD.....Barthoux expedition 1927-28.....https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/museums/mg/hadda.html"

The Buddhist stupa of Tapa Kalan, Hadda (near Jalalabad in the Kabul River valley

"Hadda, a small town 15 km south of Jalalabad (Eastern Afghanistan), owes its fame to the number and beauty of the remains of its Buddhist stūpas, shrines and monasteries scattered over an area of 15 km2 around the urban settlement......Throughout the period of Buddhism’s great flourishing, from the Kushans (1st–3rd century AD) into the 7th century AD, Hadda was a popular pilgrimage destination where, according to the accounts of famous Chinese pilgrims such as Faxian and Xuanzang, various relics of the Buddha’s body and belongings were preserved, each of them enshrined in a stūpa: a bone of the Buddha’s skull and uṣṇīṣa (cranial protuberance), an eyeball, the monastic robe and the ascetic staff....Exploration of the site began in 1834 with Charles Masson, who discovered Graeco-Bactrian, Indo-Scythian, Hunnic, Roman and Byzantine coins inside 14 stūpas in different sacred areas. The most important of these, Tapa Kalan, also yielded fragments of stone and stucco sculptures. Further minor investigations followed, until J. Barthoux of the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan carried out extensive excavations on various sites from 1926 to 1929.....Their astonishing beauty and liveliness, originally enhanced by a vibrant color, which has only minimally been preserved, and especially their Hellenistic touch aroused great interest......Between the mid-1960s and the end of the 1970s other sites were excavated by Afghan and Japanese teams. Tapa Shotor, one of the most interesting sites to be excavated during this period, revealed shrines housing cultic images and scenes characterized by the theatrical arrangement of the sculptures and their lively background (2nd–5th century AD) as well as an underground room, probably restricted to the monks’ meditation practices, as suggested by the painted decoration (5th–6th century AD) dedicated to the theme of meditation on death......In the course of the Afghan civil war, the majority of known archaeological sites was destroyed by the Taliban."...http://pro.geo.univie.ac.at/projects/khm/showcases/story233?language=en .

"In 1834, Charles Masson’s excavations in the region of Kabul and Jalalabad included a series of Buddhist ‘Topes’, i.e. stupas (sacred domed structures symbolizing the Buddha). Tope Kelan (Stupa 10) on the outskirts of Hadda, a village south of Jalalabad in south-eastern Afghanistan..... The relic deposit contained more than 200 coins buried along with a variety of over 100 objects including silver rings, gilded bronze, silver and gold reliquaries, glass and semi-precious beads and brass pins including a unique cockerel-headed example. These were buried as part of a Buddhist ritual aimed at earning merit in the afterlife."....http://blog.britishmuseum.org/category/collection/money-gallery/

"The Tope Kelan deposit contains five series of coins, Byzantine gold solidi, Sasanian silver coins, Alchon Hun silver coins, Kidarite Hun gold and silver coins, and a gold coin from Kashmir, all minted before AD 480. The hoard is important evidence of the Silk Route trade network that crisscrossed Europe, Central Asia to China and India in the first millennium AD. The Tope Kelan hoard is thus a testimony to the multiculturalism of ancient Afghanistan with its links to the Indian sub-continent, Iran and China.".......http://blog.britishmuseum.org/category/collection/money-gallery/

"The Buddhist Shrine Complex at Hadda. A Greco-Buddhist archeological site located in the ancient area of Gandhara, six miles south of the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, Hadda was one of the largest Buddhist temple and pilgrimmage complexes in the world during the 1st through 3rd centuries AD.......A key location on the 2,000-mile path that pilgrims followed in the transmission of Buddhism from India to China, Hadda was an active center for manuscript translation and duplication as well as sculpture. ....More than 23,000 Greco-Buddhist sculptures made of clay or plaster, architectural decorations plus heads and figures depicting men, women, children, assorted demons, as well as the elderly, with every conceivable mode of expression and dress, every rank and status, every facial type from all corners of the known world — more faces than one would need to re-create an entire Buddhist city — were excavated from Hadda in a series of archaeological excavations during the 1930s and the 1970s. .....Sculptures from Hadda combine elements of Buddhism and Hellenism, in an almost perfect uniquely identifiable Hellenistic style. Although the style itself is suggested by experts to date from the late Hellenistic 2nd or 1st century BC, the sculptures from Hadda are usually dated, tentatively, to the 1st century AD or later. .....Given the early date, superb quality, technical refinement, variety and stupendous quantity of sculptures, Hadda must have been a "factory town" where Greek or Greek-trained artists familiar with all the aspects of Hellenistic sculpture, lived and worked in, what scholar John Boardman described as "the cradle of incipient Buddhist sculpture in Indo-Greek style." .....The transferance of Greek heros to Buddhism (e.g., Herakles being the inspiration and model for the Buddhist Bodhissatva) is fully on display at Hadda. ....A sculptural group excavated at the Hadda temple known as Tapa-i-Shotor, for example, represents a Buddha flanked by a perfectly Hellenistic figure of Tyche holding her cornucopia and Herakles holding not his usual club, but the thunderbolt associated with the Boddhisatva fiture Vajrapani."...http://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cultural/09476/afgh02-08enl.html

"Hercules and the Buddha....In Gandharan art, the Buddha is often shown under the protection of the Greek god Herakles, standing with his club (and later a diamond rod) resting over his arm...Via the Greco-Buddhist culture, Heraclean symbolism was transmitted to the far east.....Heracles was perhaps the most popular hero god of the Greeks. In the Greek colonies in Bactria and India, the club wielding lion killer, Heracles became Vajrapani a protector of Buddha. Still recognizable as a bearded Greek with a club....which became the diamond thunderbolt).... "

"In addition to sculpture, Hadda contained some of the the oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts in the world, which are perhaps the oldest surviving Indian manuscripts of any kind,the long-lost canon of the Sarvastivadin Sect that dominated Gandhara and was instrumental in Buddhism's spread from India to China. ....Probably dating from around the 1st century AD, looted from Hadda during the 1990s and smuggled to Pakistan, these Buddhist manuscripts were written on birch bark in the Gandhari language. Discovered in a clay pot bearing an inscription in the same language eventually passed to the British Library in London and the University of Washington in Seattle. The legal ownership of these priceless manuscripts remains in dispute. ....More than 1000 of the vast assemblage of sculptures found at Hadda during the 1930s and 1970s were secured at the Kabul Museum and the Musée Guimet in Paris.".....http://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cultural/09476/afgh02-08enl.html

http://c8.alamy.com/comp/A241CC/hadda-monuments-at-darunta-on-the-road-to-hadda-afghanistan-A241CC.jpg

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February 2016

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Bactrian Timeline: 2500 BC - 870 AD

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2300 BC......."The Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (or BMAC, also known as the Oxus civilization) is the modern archaeological designation for a Bronze Age civilisation of Central Asia, dated to ca. 2300–1700 BCE, located in present-day northern Afghanistan, eastern Turkmenistan, southern Uzbekistan and western Tajikistan, centered on the upper Amu Darya (Oxus River)....In the Early Bronze Age the culture of the Kopet Dag oases and Altyn-Depe developed a proto-urban society..... Pottery was wheel-turned. Grapes were grown. The height of this urban development was reached in the Middle Bronze Age c. 2300 BC..... It is this Bronze Age culture which has been given the BMAC name."

2000 BC....."Balkh is considered to be the first city to which the Indo-Iranian tribes moved from the North of Amu Darya, between 2000 – 1500 BC. The Arabs called it Umm Al-Belaad or Mother of Cities due to its antiquity...Bactria in ancient times was renowned for its grapes, oranges, water lilies and later sugar cane.....several natural trade routes intersect at Balkh. From there, caravans could follow the well-watered foot of the mountains westward towards Herat and Iran, or across the Oxus to Samarkand and China and all the routes across the Hindu Kush......the greatness of Balkh owes even more to those distinctive people who promoted craftsmanship and trade, created cities and wrote poetry all across the Iranian world. On the down side, Balkh was usually rich rather than powerful, and became the envy and the prize of more warlike neighbors."......http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/cities/afghanistan/balkh.html

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1800 BC........"Shenrab Miwo......"The teacher who transmitted Bon into Tibet from Shang Shung (or Tazik) reportedly in 1800 BC. The Berlin manuscript of the Zermig has several unusual representations of Shenrap."......The Bon Religion of Tibet: The Iconography of a Living Tradition...by Per Kvaerne

1700 BC......Zarathustra......"Controversy over Zaraϑuštra's date has been an embarrassment of long standing to Zoroastrian studies. If anything approaching a consensus exists, it is that he lived no later than 1000 BC, give or take a century or so, though reputable scholars have proposed dates as widely apart as 1750 BC and '258 years before Alexander'."........http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarathustra#cite_note-10

1600 BC......"The Proto-Indo-Iranians, from which the Indo-Aryans developed, are identified with the Sintashta culture (2100–1800 BC), and the Andronovo culture, which flourished ca. 1800–1400 BC in the steppes around the Aral sea, present-day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The proto-Indo-Iranians were influenced by the Bactria-Margiana Culture, south of the Andronovo culture, from which they borrowed their distinctive religious beliefs and practices. The Indo-Aryans split off around 1800-1600 BC from the Iranians, whereafter the Indo-Aryans migrated into the Levant and north-western India.".....Anthony, David W. (2007), The Horse The Wheel And Language. How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped The Modern World,

1600 B.C......."In the Rig Veda, we read that the initial relationship between the Aryan religious groups... asuras (ahura) and deva was one of coexistence. This relationship would gradually change to one of competition....The story of the differences between the asuras and devas were of course a reflection of the differences and the violent conflict between the deva and asura worshippers. While the Hindu scriptures do not directly refer to Mazda worshippers, the Zoroastrian and Persian texts talk about the conflict as one between the deva and Mazda worshippers.....Periodically, one group would win dominance over the other. Nevertheless, until, their separation into the nations of Iran and India, they did coexist....At the time of Zarathushtra's birth, Asura/Mazda worship had lost ground to Deva worship....The conflict eventually resulted in the deva worshippers living in the Central Asian kingdom, leaving or being pushed south through the Hindu Kush mountain passes into the upper Indus valley.....The Indus Valley was called Hindu (Hind or Ind) in the Avesta." ....http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/aryans/religion2.htm

1500 B.C...."....The weather change in Airyana Vaeja, that pollen and tree ring analysis indicates the Chang Tang plateau in Western and Northern Tibet had a far more liveable environment than it has today - one that supported a primordial civilization - until, starting around 1500 BC, the climate become colder and drier. The climate change would have caused the population to migrate out of the northern plateau. This type of climate change from temperate to cold, and the resulting changes in the environment from comfortable and verdant to harsh and rocky, is similar to the Zoroastrian stories of a climate change during the reign of legendary King Jamshid."....http://iranian.com/posts/view/post/7621

1000 B.C.......The I Ching (Chinese: 易經; pinyin: Yìjīng; [î tɕjə́ŋ]), also known as the Classic of Changes or Book of Changes in English, is an ancient divination text and the oldest of the Chinese classics. Possessing a history of more than two and a half millennia of commentary and interpretation, the I Ching is an influential text read throughout the world, providing inspiration to the worlds of religion, psychoanalysis, business, literature, and art. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC),

900 B.C..........."The King of Shambhala, King Suchandra (sometimes wrongly Sanskritized as "Chandrabhadra," Tib. Dawa Sangpo), was the one who requested teaching from the Buddha. In response to his request, the Buddha gave the first Kalachakra root tantra in 900 to 876 BC. Note: the Kalachakra calculations put quite a bit earlier than the birth of Shakyamuni Buddha (563 or 566 B.C.)"

600 B.C.......Zoroastrianism....one of the world's oldest religions, "combining a cosmogonic dualism and eschatological monotheism in a manner unique... among the major religions of the world." It was founded by the Prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) in ancient Iran approximately 3500 years ago. It was the official religion of Persia (Iran) from 600 BC to 650 AD.".....

604 B.C........Lao-Tzu (Lao-Tze)........c.604 - c.521 BC...Laozi of the Daoist school urged: "Man follows earth, earth follows Heaven, Heaven follows the Way, and the Way follows nature."

551 B.C.........Confucius (c. 551 – 479 BC)....... a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history....Confucius's principles had a basis in common Chinese tradition and belief. He championed strong family loyalty, ancestor worship, respect of elders by their children and of husbands by their wives....Confucius said more about "human affairs" and less about "the Mandate of Heaven." Nonetheless, he also believed that "what the saint says" is in keeping with "the Mandate of Heaven."....The Mandate of Heaven is an ancient Chinese belief and philosophical idea that tiān (heaven) granted emperors the right to rule based on their ability to govern well and fairly. According to this belief, heaven bestows its mandate to a just ruler, the Son of Heaven."...Jiang, Yonglin (2011). The Mandate of Heaven and The Great Ming Code (Asian Law Series). University of Washington Press.

563 B.C......."Shakyamuni Buddha.....In 563 or 566 B.C., a prince was born to a noble family of the Shakya clan, in a very beautiful park called Lumbini Grove, which lay in the foothills of the Himalayas (in present-day southern Nepal). This beautiful park was not far from the capital city of the Shakya kingdom, Kapilavastu. The prince’s father, King Shuddhodana, named his son Siddhartha. He was a member of the Kshatriya, or royal warrior caste, and his clan lineage, the Gautamas, was ancient and pure. His mother was Mahamaya or Mayadevi, daughter of a powerful Shakya noble, Suprabuddha."...http://kagyuoffice.org/buddhism/shakyamuni-buddha/

329 B.C..........."Alexander took Bactria in 329 B.C., and made it his base for conquest and amalgamation of the Greek and Iranian civilizations.....After Alexander the Great’s victory over King Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC, he had to contend with small rebellions that broke out across his empire. In the summer of 328 BC, one such rebellion occurred in the eastern satrapy of Bactria, a rebellion that would lead to a chance meeting with the beautiful Roxanne, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Oxyartes, the satrap of Bactria .....The marriage between Roxanne of Balkh and Alexander the Great took place in 327 BC."

304 B.C......."Emperor Ashoka the Great (Aśoka) lived from 304 to 232 BC and was the third ruler of the Mauryan Empire."

129 B.C......Bactria.....annexation by the Kushans (129 B.C.), whose large and powerful empire stretched from Central Asia deep into India. Balkh flourished at the crossroads as a depot and trans-shipment point for the world’s luxuries. “ From the Roman Empire the caravans brought gold and silver vessels and wine; fom Central Asia and China rubies, furs, aromatic gums, drugs, raw silk and embroidered silks; from India spices, cosmetics, ivory and precious gems of infinite variety” With the merchants came monks preaching the new religion of Buddhism, and Balkh became a center of worship and learning, famous for its Buddhist temples and monasteries."...http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/cities/afghanistan/balkh.html

216 A.D......Mani (Middle Persian Māni and Syriac Mānī, Greek Μάνης, Latin Manes; also Μανιχαίος, Latin Manichaeus, from Syriac ܡܐܢܝ ܚܝܐ Mānī ḥayyā)....... c. 216–274 A.D.), of Iranian origin....the prophet and the founder of Manichaeism, a gnostic religion of Late Antiquity which was once widespread but is now extinct.... In 240–41 A.D. , Mani travelled to "India" (i.e. to the Sakhas in modern-day Afghanistan), where he studied Hinduism and was probably influenced by Greco-Buddhism. Al-Biruni says Mani traveled to 'India' after being banished from Persia. Returning in 242 A.D., he joined the court of Shapur I, to whom he dedicated his only work written in Persian, known as the Shabuhragan. Shapur was not converted to Manichaeanism and remained Zoroastrian."....Marco Frenschkowski (1993). "Mani".

630 A.D......."By the time the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (formerly spelled Hsuan Tsang) passed through Balkh (630 A.D.) on his way to the fountainhead of Buddhism in India, the city had become part of the Sassanian empire. The bazaars were still humming with trade, the countryside fertile and the great temples impressed him with their magnificence. But Xuanzang noted laxness among the monks, and the rise of Zoroastrianism. There was strife with the Turki nomads across the Oxus, and the Arab incursions were just fifteen years ahead."...http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/cities/afghanistan/balkh.html

633 A.D....."Parsis.....According to the Qissa-i Sanjan, Parsis migrated from Greater Iran to Gujarat and Sindh between the 8th and 10th century AD to avoid the persecution of Zoroastrians by Muslim invaders who conquered Iran....When Islam became the predominant religion of areas including such present-day countries as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Oman, the Muslim invasion of Persia, launched by the Rashidun Caliphate in 633 AD, became a huge event in the history of the region. During these conquests, buildings and books were destroyed....Due to this persecution, Zoroastrians became refugees in India."...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism_in_India

650 A.D......"Iranian-Aryan Relations with the Tibetan Empire....The Tibetan empire established by Songtsen Gampo soon grew in power that extended beyond its borders....The Yarlung dynasty appears to have continued the collaborative relationship the Zhang Zhung had with the Iranian Aryans. The relationship continued even after the Arabs had conquered the Persian empire. Since it is the Tibetans who had become the dominant eastern power in the seventh century CE, it is they who provided the Persians and Sogdians sanctury.....As they fled east, the Persians first took refuge in Sugd (Sogdiana) and their presence there has been recorded on Sogdian inscriptions in Panjakand and Paykand. Then as the Persians and Sogdians continued east into China...... the rise of Tibetan power was because of the assistance of Persian refugees fleeing from the Arab invasion of Persia in the 650s AD. According to Nikitin, when the Persians arrived in the Tibetan court, they trained the Tibetans in the art of imperial warfare. According to another author Beckwith, a Chinese source describes the Yarlung Tibetan warriors and horses as being completely clad in armour in the Sassanian fashion. An important military technological advance and advantage for the Tibetans was their newly acquired ability to produce chain mail for armour.".....http://iranian.com/posts/view/post/7621

674 A.D......."Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad (Arabic: عبيد الله بن زياد‎) was an Umayyad general and the governor for the Umayyad Caliphate in Kufa, in what is now Iraq during the reign of Yazid I.....In 674 he crossed the Amu Darya and defeated the forces of the ruler of Bukhara in the first known invasion of the city by Muslim Arabs.

870 A.D......."In 672 an Arab governor of Sistan, Abbad ibn Ziyad, raided the frontier of Al-Hind and crossed the desert to Gandhara, but quickly retreated again. The Arab General Obaidallah (Ubayd Allah) crossed the Sita River and made a raid on Kabul in 698 only to meet with defeat and humiliation. Vincent Smith, in Early History of India, states that the Turkishahiya dynasty continued to rule over Kabul and Gandhara up until the advent of the Saffarids in the ninth century. Forced by the inevitable advance of Islam on the west, they then moved their capital from Kapisa to Wahund on the Indus, whence they contin­ued as the Hindushahiya dynasty. This was in 870 A.D. and marks the first time that the Kingdom of Shambhala actually came under Moslem domination.".....http://www.dharmafellowship.org/biographies/historicalsaints/lord-padmasambhava.htm#eightcentury

870 A.D......."The Kabul Shahi dynasties also called Shahiya ruled the Kabul Valley (in eastern Afghanistan) and the old province of Gandhara (northern Pakistan and Kashmir) during the Classical Period of India from the decline of the Kushan Empire in the 3rd century to the early 9th century A.D. They are split into two eras the Buddhist-Shahis and the later Hindu-Shahis with the change-over occurring around 870.A.D."....Sehrai, Fidaullah (1979). Hund: The Forgotten City of Gandhara

"The times that followed were turbulent ones in Central Asia. Balkh changed hands repeatedly among Arab, Persian and Turki rulers, and was sacked more than once, yet it continued to flourish. The Arab geographers Yaqubi and Moqaddasi (9th and 10th centuries) depict Balkh as it was under Samanid rule, whe Bukhara was the center of power. A large and prosperous city of mud brick some three square miles in area, it held perhaps 200,000 persons. It was surrounded by mud-brick walls pierced by seven gates. A splendid Friday Mosque occupied the center, and many more mosques were scattered among the dwellings. The fire temple in the suburbs, which Xuanzang had admired when it was a Buddhist monastery, was still noteworthy. The city was home, not only to Persians and Turks but also to communities of Jews and Indian traders. It nourished poets and scholars, lawyers and even geographers and astronomers. But peace was a sometime thing; even when Balkh came under Seljuk rule for over a century, the nomads were never far away."......http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/cities/afghanistan/balkh.html

("Catastrophe struck in 1220 A.D., when Ghengis Khan chose to make an example of Balkh, perhaps as punishment for an uprising. One hundred thousand Mongol horsemen embarked on an orgy of slaughter and destruction that left nothing standing; a few weeks later they returned to pick off the survivors of the carnage. Balkh remained in ruins for a century.".....http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/cities/afghanistan/balkh.html

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

January 2016

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The Shulgara Valley, Bactra & Chashma-i-Shafa

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Click on the map to enlarge

"The Shulgara Valley is next to Chashma-i-Shafa and is located near Balkh, Afghanistan......Location of Bactra and Zariaspa?.....Recent research by David Adams (an experienced Australian documentary maker and photo-journalist) and his research team suggests that Bactra and Zariaspa are not synonymous with Balkh but are located further south in the Shulgara Valley in the Paraopamisus mountain range. This was presented in Episode 2 - The Mother of All Cities in his series Alexander's Lost World. The location proposed is backed by circumstantial evidence including consistency with contemporary accounts (the site of modern Balkh is not) and the presence of archaeological ruins which are consistent with contemporary accounts; the ruins are the subject of a French archaelogical dig. According to Adams, contemporary Greek accounts describe Bactra and Zariaspa as twin cities and 'that the two cities lay at the foot of the Paraopamisus mountains and the Bactra river flowed past their walls.".........https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ABalkh

Click on the map to enlarge

"Cheshmeh-ye Shafa is a village in Balkh Province in northern Afghanistan.....On October 2008, French archaeologists believed they have found a vast ancient city of Bactria......Coordinates: 36°32′0″N 66°58′0″E....Perched high above an important pass between Central Asia and the road to India, the fortifications of Cheshm-e Shafa were a crucial stronghold for a succession of empires for more than 1,500 years beginning in the 5th century B.C."...Edge of an Empire....October 2011 by Andrew Lawler

Click on the map to enlarge......https://www.google.com/maps/place/Chashma-i-Shafa

"Cheshm-e-Shafa.......In the spring of 2008 French and Afghan archaeologists announced that they had uncovered the ruins of a vast, hither-to unknown, ancient city at Cheshm-e-Shafa, the 'City of Infidels' (Unbelievers), some 20 miles (30 kilometres) from the ruins of Balkh fortress..... this was once an important Zoroastrian city. The dig team have uncovered a 6-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) anvil-like stone believed to have been an altar at a fire temple dating back to around the 6th century BC. "....http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/balkh/balkh2.htm

"Balkhab River in Shulgara........The picture with the title 'Shulgara River' banks was taken by the photographer Mike1971 on 11 June 2011 and published over Panoramio. Shulgara River banks is next to Qizil Kand and is located in Balkh, Afghanistan....Photo taken in Chimtal, Afghanistan".....http://www.panoramio.com/photo/54055792

"The Achaemenid palace in Bactra (modern Balkh in N-Afghanistan) has been discovered. This is the place where Alexander spent the winter of 329/328 BC, and where Bessus was sentenced to death (and probably crucified); it may have been the place where Alexander married Roxane in 327 BC. .....http://forum.alexander-the-great.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=1320&sid=b3470178438a68d27a654935e62e2aab

"Marmul in Balkh (region) is a city in Afghanistan - about 175 mi (or 281 km) North-West of Kabul, the country's capital.....Travel warnings are updated daily: This country is marked as DO NOT TRAVEL.....

"Chashma-i-Shafa is in Afghanistan, situated near Rubāţ-e Bālā.....Variant forms of spelling for Rubāţ-e Bālā or in other languages: Rubāţ-e Bālā, رباطِ بالا, Robāţ-e Bālā, Robat-e Bala, Robāţ-e Bālā, Rubat-e Bala, Rubāţ-e Bālā, rbati bala, رباطِ بالا.

"A Korean construction firm is constructing a highway that happens over the archaeological place.....French archaeologists who work there have put themselves in front of the machines to prevent the place from being destroyed."...http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/5685992/Ancient-settlement-could-be-bulldozed.html)

"An ancient city of what is now northern Afghanistan. Bactra/Zariaspa (modern Balkh?) was a center of Zoroastrianism.
Names:
Bactra (550 BC - AD 300)
Baktra (330 BC - AD 226)
Balḫ (2000 BC - AD 2000)
Balḫ (2000 BC - AD 2000)
Baḫl (AD 300 - AD 640)
Bāxtri (540 BC - 330 BC)
Bāḫtri (540 BC - 330 BC)
Lan-shih (30 BC - AD 226)
Zaraspadum (30 BC - AD 300)
Zariaspa (330 BC - AD 300)
Zariaspa (540 BC - 140 BC)
...http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/961886

"CHESHM-E-SHAFA, Afghanistan — Centuries-old shards of pottery mingle with spent ammunition rounds on a wind-swept mountainside in northern Afghanistan where French archaeologists believe they have found a vast ancient city. For years, villagers have dug the baked earth on the heights of Cheshm-e-Shafa for pottery and coins to sell to antique smugglers. Tracts of the site that locals call the "City of Infidels" look like a battleground, scarred by craters......But now tribesmen dig angular trenches and preserve fragile walls, working as laborers on an excavation atop a promontory. To the north and east lies an undulating landscape of barren red-tinted rock that was once the ancient kingdom of Bactria; to the south a still-verdant valley that leads to the famed Buddhist ruins at Bamiyan.....Roland Besenval, director of the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan and leading the excavation, is sanguine about his helpers' previous harvesting of the site. "Generally the old looters make the best diggers," he said with a shrug.....A trip around the northern province of Balkh is like an odyssey through the centuries, spanning the ancient Persian empire, the conquests of Alexander the Great and the arrival of Islam. The French mission has mapped some 135 sites of archaeological interest in the region, best known for the ancient trove found by a Soviet archaeologist in the 1970s......The Bactrian Hoard consisted of exquisite gold jewelry and ornaments from graves of wealthy nomads, dated to the 1st century A.D. It was concealed by its keepers in the vaults of the presidential palace in Kabul from the Taliban regime and finally unlocked after the militia's ouster.....The treasure, currently on exhibition in the United States, demonstrates the rich culture that once thrived here, blending influences from the web of trails and trading routes known as the Silk Road, that spread from Rome and Greece to the Far East and India.".....http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26095077/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/ancient-city-uncovered-afghanistan/#.VmQ0z-MrKRs

"The Old Iranian name of Paktra, which the classical writers named it Bactria and their language was known as Bactrian, and after invasion of Iran by Arabs in 7th century CE it has come to be called Balkh;.....Not much has been known about this empire, only some coins and a little bit of writing and occasional archaeological artifacts. Much of the work on excavations of Bactrian artifacts has been done by French Archaeologists. Historians find remote references in other people's records about the kingdom.....It was from Bactria that came prophet Zarathushtra (Zartosht/Zardosht). Another source of spiritual home that made Bactria sacred was a great temple of the ancient Iranian goddess, Anahit (in Pahlavi or Middle-Persian) and Anahita (Ânâhitâ) in the Avesta hymns.......The temple was so rich that often it attracted the needy Syrian kings who sat out to plunder it. In her name and honor, in Armenia, girls prostituted themselves. Anaitis was a Scythian goddess, but she is identified also as Assyrian Mylitta, the Arabian Alytta and the Greek Venus Urania. Artaxerxes Mnemon, one of the emperors of Achaemenid dynasty was among her devotees. She is also associated with the Persian Mithra. Her association with Zoroaster adds to her popularity......Bactria, by some writers, is called "the pride of Ariana". The ancient local citizen called it "Bactria the beautiful". Bactria was popular for its fertility. Besides Oxus, the Arius [modern Hari-rud] and a few other smaller river irrigate it. A large variety of fruits and vegetables grows here and excellent breed of sheep were raised in green Hindu Kush slopes. Bacteria is also known for its camels......However, the most popular of the Bactrian animals is the Bactrian horse. This animal played a partial role in the reputation of Bactrian cavalry in the ancient world......The once well watered land of Bactria and its fair climate has generally changed. The courses of the rivers have shifted, thus Bactria is not as glorious as it had been during the Macedonian occupation. The river Oxus once poured into the Caspian Sea, but now it flows into the Aral Sea. The modern city of Balkh [the old Bactrus], stood on the banks of this river, but now the city is a few miles away from the mighty Oxus.......Another feature of Bactria was the succession of mighty natural forts (Kalas) spread over the country, asserting to the traveler the safety and excellent strategical position of the city.".......http://www.iranchamber.com/geography/articles/balkh.php#sthash.wcCpbkoU.dpuf

"The Aryans and the Iranians of Bactria, had a lot in common. They spoke the same language, worshiped the forces of nature, such as: Varuna, the shining Vault of Heaven; Mithra, the friendly light of the sun; Vayu; the wind that pushes aside the storms and clears the heaven; Yama, the primeval man, reigning over the blessed souls in paradise. The powers of nature, to them, were the signs of something far more deeply interfused. In their ceremonies they also drunk the sacred Juice, Soma. These two races slowly drifted apart as time went on, for not known reasons.".....http://www.iranchamber.com/geography/articles/balkh.php#sthash.wcCpbkoU.dpuf

"It is probably Zarathushtra who changes the religion of the Iranians from the old Aryan to the Zarathushtrian. By this time, the language also changed. Iranians held the fire sacred and stopped burning their dead, instead they exposed the dead to the birds. Out of the old religion came new practices, for example, holding some animals sacred....Also minute rituals were created around new practices. Lastly, the existence of a dualism in Nature appeared. They explained Evil as the work of the lord of the Hosts of Daeva...... The legend is that Zarathushtra appeared during the reign of Gushtaspa at "Bactra the beautiful, city of the high - streaming banner". Zarathushtra's wife's family were very influential in the Royal court, that helped Zarathushtra spread his religion. Hence, Bactria became the heart of the new creed. According to Ferdowsi. Zarathushtra was killed by an invading Scythian party in front of his fire-altar, in Balkh".......http://www.iranchamber.com/geography/articles/balkh.php#sthash.wcCpbkoU.dpuf

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

December 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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Dilbarjin, the Balḵāb River & the Greek Dioscuri Temple (2500 BC)

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Dilbarjin: (2500 BC) A large urban site surrounded by city walls....dominated by a fortified enclosure and citadel (Kala) in the center, and has a vast unfortified urban area to the east and south of the city walls.

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"Dilbarjin (Delbarjin) is the modern name for the remains of an ancient town in modern (northern) Afghanistan. The town was perhaps founded in the time of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the Kushan Empire it became a major local centre. After the Indo-Sassanids the town was abandoned.......The town proper was about 390 x 390 m big. Dilbarjin had a city wall built under the Kushan rule. In the middle of the town there was a round citadel, built at about the same time. In the North-East corner of the town was excavated a temple complex. Here were found many wall paintings, some in a purely Hellenistic style. Originally the temple was perhaps dedicated to the Dioscuri. Outside the city walls there were still substantial buildings. Finds include inscriptions in Bactrian, most of them too destroyed to provide any historical information. There were fragments of sculpture and many coins.".......Warwick Ball: Archaeological Gazetteer of Afghanistan : Catalogue des sites archéologiques d'Afghanistan, Paris 1982, p. 91-92

"DELBARJĪN, urban site 40 km northwest of Balḵ, on the northern limit of an oasis irrigated by the Balḵāb, near a defensive wall built during the Greek period (ca 329-130 B.C.) to protect the oasis. It was probably founded in the 5th century B.C. and flourished up to about the 6th century AD...... Study of the fortifications excavated by a Soviet-Afghan mission (c. 1969-77) suggests that the earliest stage of the citadel may date from the Achaemenid period, as the closest parallels to the construction methods and ceramic finds are of that period (Dolgorukov)...... It was, however, only in the final phase of Greek hegemony (ca. 150 B.C.), when the city may have been known as Eucratideia (Strabo, 11.11.2; Ptolemy, 6.11.8), or at the beginning of the Kushan period (ca. the beginning of the common era) that the site assumed its final configuration: a city protected by a quadrangular rampart (383-93 m2), with a circular citadel in the center. The northeast corner of the walled enclosure was occupied by a temple precinct (Figure 11/I, II), and suburbs of considerable size lay south and east of the city (Dolgorukov; Puga-chenkova, 1984). The earliest city wall consisted of a rather thin curtain of paḵsa (tamped earth mixed with water) and unbaked brick, built on a glacis of paḵsa and pierced with arrow slits, with hollow quadrangular towers at intervals. At the beginning of the Kushan period a second wall, also with towers, was constructed outside the original rampart, forming an interior gallery typical of Central Asian fortifications.".....

Catalogue of the National Museum of Afghanistan, 1931-1985.......By Tissot, Francine...Click on the map to enlarge

"BALḴĀB (Bactros of the classical authors), the river of Balḵ (locally pronounced Balḵaw). This perennial river is a major feature of the geography of northern Afghanistan....Baxl Rōd (the modern Balḵāb)...... It is called the “river of Balḵ” by the author of Ḥodūd al-ʿālam......a name often applied to the Oxus (Jeyḥūn) by early Muslim geographers "

The Dioscuri at Dilberjin....."The present article deals with a wall painting representing the Dioscuri, which was found in the main temple of Dilberjin (Southern Bactria.... near Balkh). .....On the grounds of a comparison with the Graeco-Roman iconographic repertory of the Divine Twins (a particular attention being paid to compositional schemata) there are reasons to reject the chronology (the 2nd century BC) proposed by I.T. Kruglikova, the 2nd (or 3rd) century AD seeming a more reasonable date for its execution. As to the function of the Twins, they are hardly to be thought of as the main object of the cult, whereas a number of clues suggest that they might have figured as assistants or guardians of a major, possibly female, deity. This is a pattern widespread in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire (the "Dioscuri with a Goddess"), but rooted in the local religious background as well (the Indo-Iranian Twins often associated with a female deity). A painting representing the Brahmanic couple Siva-Pârvatî, found in the same temple but pertaining to a later phase, is also taken into consideration as a further possible clue to a female cult. "....Lo Muzio, C, “The Dioscuri at Dilberjin (Northern Afghanistan): Reviewing their Chronology and Significance“, Studia Iranica, n°28-1 (1999), p. 41-71......https://frombactriatotaxila.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/the-dioscuri-at-dilberjin-northern-afghanistan-reviewing-their-chronology-and-significance/

"In Greek and Roman mythology, Castor and Pollux were twin brothers, together known as the Dioskouri. Their mother was Leda, but Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, and Pollux the divine son of Zeus, who seduced Leda in the guise of a swan. Though accounts of their birth are varied, they are sometimes said to have been born from an egg, along with their twin sisters and half-sisters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra.......In Latin the twins are also known as the Gemini or Castores..... When Castor was killed, Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with his twin to keep them together, and they were transformed into the constellation Gemini. The pair were regarded as the patrons of sailors, to whom they appeared as St. Elmo's fire, and were also associated with horsemanship.......They are sometimes called the Tyndaridae or Tyndarids.....The Dioscuri were regarded as helpers of humankind....

BACTRIAN KING, EUKRATIDES, 171-135 BC........Helmeted bust r./The Dioskouroi.

"We know some wall paintings from the early medieval period, which in the opinion of Gulyamov reached their highest degree of development in the 6th – 8th centuries AD as far as mural size, wealth of scenes, realistic and rich colors of images are concerned......Such paintings were discovered in Dilberjin (near Balkh), Balalyk-tepe , Adzhina-tepe (a Buddhist monastery of the 7th century AD, 12.5 kilometers east of Kurgan-Tube) , Kafyr-qala (Kurgan-Tube district in Tajikistan), Kalai Kafirnigan (80 km to the south-west of Dushanbe) , Kalai Shodmon and several others. The subjects of the images are essentially religious in nature, excluding the image of Balalyk-tepe, where there are secular topics. Art historians have identified a number of painter’s schools for the period. The Tokharistan school was represented by Balalyk-tepe, Adzhina-tepe, Kafyr-qala; the northern Tokharistan school in the Buddhist Temples of Kuva and in Semirechye; the School of the “western edge” with monuments in Sogd, Khorezm...."....http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDISS_derivate_000000007165/01_Text.pdf

"In the late 60’s - mid 70’s of the 4th century AD.... Shapur II twice fought with the “Kushans”, who had their capital in Balkh. We know the events form these wars from the work “History of Armenia” by the Armenian historian Fawstos Buzand (end of the 4th - beginning of the 5th c. AD). The first war was begun by the “King of Kushans”..... Shapur II personally led the Sasanian army, but it did not help the Persians: “…the K’ušan army defeated the Persian forces exceedingly. It killed many of them, took many prisoners, and drove part of them into flight”......The war of Shapur II in the east is dated by the last years life of the Armenian king Arsak, captured by the Persian shahinshah in AD 367......".......http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDISS_derivate_000000007165/01_Text.pdf

"Among the objects found over more than a century and a half in the territories that today correspond to the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union and with Afghanistan and Pakistan only few can be attributed to a purely Hellenistic archeological context. The main examples are the sanctuary of the god Oxus at Taḵt-e Sangin and the remnants of the capital of eastern Bactria, namely Āy Ḵānom/Aï Khanum (q.v.) in northern Afghanistan. At Āy Ḵānom, Macedonian political power was upheld from the beginning of the Seleucid period to the disappearance of the city around 145 B.C. under the attacks of the Saka nomads from north, followed by that of Yüeh-chih (Yuezhi). ".....http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/greece-viii

"....Supporting the early date of Buddhism in Bactria is a ceramic reliquary from the Kunduz area; it carries a kharoṣṭhī inscription which says that there was a Buddhist vihāra in the vicinity and that the teaching of the Dharmaguptaka sect was widespread there. The inscription is dated to the 1st-2nd centuries AD (Fussman, 1974). A “Buddhist platform” at Sorḵ Kotal, dated, together with the statues, to the 2nd-3rd century AD, is an outstanding monument (Schlumberger, Le Berre, and Fussman, 1983, pp. 75-81). The foundation of a Buddhist monastery at Kunduz can be probably dated to the end of the Kushan period (Hackin, 1959, pp. 19-22). Additional Buddhist temples are found in Dilberjin, Haibak, and other places.......Systematic archeological research in northern Bactria (that is, north of the Amu Darya, in the south of modern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) has revealed numerous Buddhist monuments, mainly concentrated at Termez."......http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/buddhism-iv

Diagram of the Dilbarjin Kala (Click to enlarge)

"Dilbarjin......Variant Name: Dalbarjin.......Jauzjan Province. 40 kilometers northwest of Balkh and 20 kilometers northeast of Aqcha.
Dates: Achaemenid, 6th-4th century BC
Kushan, 1st-3rd century AD
Kushano-Sassanian, 1st half of the 5th century
A large urban site surrounded by city walls re-inforced with rectangular salients. It is dominated by a fortified enclosure and citadel in the center, and has a vast unfortified urban area to the east and south of the city walls. Mounds to the southeast and southwest mark two probably monumental buildings. There is also a temple, of two main periods of construction,, that contained many frescos of the Bamiyan style, a Shiva-Parvati fresco with inscription, a marble Bactrian inscription, many sculptural fragments and many coins. Local pottery production is evident from kilns producing many wasters.
Source: Warwick Ball, Archaeological Gazetteer of Afghanistan, 1982, n. 265, 295

"Eucratideia was an ancient town in Bactria mentioned by a few ancient writers. It was most likely a foundation of Eucratides I who is the more important ruler of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom with the name Eucratides. Not much is known about this city and it might be just a renaming of an already existing town rather than a new foundation. Renaming of cities was a common practise in the ancient world......The location of Eucratideia is disputed. Some proposed locations are:
Dilbarjin
Ai-Khanoum...at the confluence of the Oxus river (today's Amu Darya) and the Kokcha river
Qarshi; the 1923 work "The Encyclopaedia Metropolitana: Or Universal Dictionary of Knowledge" states: "Eucratidia, named from its ruler, (Strabo, xi. p. 516.) was, according to Ptolemy, 2° North and 1° West of Bactra." As these coordinates are relative to, and close to, Bactra, it is reasonable to disregard the imprecision in Ptolemy's coordinates and accept them without adjustment. If the coordinates for Bactra are taken to be 36°45′N 66°55′E, then the coordinates 38°45′N 65°55′E can be seen to be close to the modern day city of Qarshi.

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

November 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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Charikar (Kapisa) and the Panjshir Valley

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"Charikar (Persian: چاریکار‎, pronounced Chârikâr) is the main town of the Kohdaman Valley and the capital of Parwan Province in northern Afghanistan. The city lies on the road 69 km from Kabul to the northern provinces. Travelers would pass Charikar when traveling to Mazar-I-Sharif, Kunduz or Puli Khumri. Charikar is at the gateway to the Panjshir Valley, where the Shamali plains meet the foothills of the Hindu Kush. Charikar is known for its pottery and high-quality grapes....."

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"In 329 BC, Alexander the Great founded the settlement of Parwan as his Alexandria of the Caucasus...(medieval Kapisa) .....He founded the colony at an important junction of communications in the southern foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains, in the country of the Paropamisade......In Classical times, the Hindu Kush were also designated as the "Caucasus" .......from the Scythian kroy-khasis (“ice-shining, white with snow”)."

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'Alexandreia under Kaukasos' was founded by Alexander the great at the foot of Paropanisos in 329 BC before he crossed into Bactria......Alexandreia was 50 miles march from Ortospanum (Kabul) ......Alexandria 'under Kaukasos' or 'of the Paropamisadai'......Location uncertain but try...the valley of the Koh-Daman, which is at the foot of great mountain....toward the northern edge of this valley lies the village of Charikar, where the three roads into Bactria diverge......in this area is a place called Opian or Houpian, where vast ruins discovered by Masson, indicate the former presence of an important town.....Alexandreia is described as 'a city in Opiane'......Houpian...Opiane.....large city in which the Vardaks resided....Hou-pi-na in Chinese)....Babar in his memirs speaks of Houpian as the name of the Pass which opens on the valley of the Ghorbund.....mentioned by Hardy as Alasadda or Alasanda.....(Hardy's Manual of Buddhism).....Alasanda was the birthplace of Menander."....Page 332.....Invasion of India-by Alexander the Great by T.W. McCrindle

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"On the 5th we reached Charekar, the largest town in Koh Daman, and situated at the mouth of the Ghorbund Valley....we should reach the River Parwan the next day....Late in the evening we arrived, very weary and somewhat disheartened, at the botton of a deep dell, along which was scattered a village named Sambala......we reached a shallow ravine, on the opposite bank of which stood a tower commanding the ascent on that side....an old woman stepped forward on the edge of the ravine and stayed the hand of her highly offended countrymen....Her garments hung in tatters, and her manner and gesticulations were fierce and wild...At length here elopeence was successful, and we were permitted to move on. .....we emerged a short time after sunset, into the Parwan valley, at the village of I-angheran. Next day we reached the head of the valley... we pitched our tent at the foot of the pass (to the north-west).....a place called Sir-i-lung.......(the pass of Ghorbund, several miles to the west of Parwan?)....from the foot of the pass to the village of I-angheran the Parwan valley is a narrow, rocky defile...but after passing that village it assumes a softer character..... (Chapter XII...Page 187-193....)......"A Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Source of the River Oxus by John Wood.......https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Personal_Narrative_of_a_Journey_to_the.html?id=aiAPAAAAYAAJ

The Panjshir Valley (also spelled Panjsheer or Panjsher; Persian: درهٔ پنجشير‎ - Dare-ye Panjšēr; literally Valley of the Five Lions) is a valley in north-central Afghanistan, 150 kilometres (93 mi) north of Kabul, near the Hindu Kush mountain range. Located in the Panjshir Province it is divided by the Panjshir River.......The Shomali Plain, also called the Shomali Valley, is a plateau north of Kabul, Afghanistan. It is approximately 30 km wide and 80 km long. Once, it was an extremely fertile area, but it became a desert..... It is one of the relatively few prospering areas of Afghanistan....Shomali Plain is a plateau north of Kabul. It is approximately 30 km wide, and 80 km long.....The valley – fertile and rich with water – was once Kabul's garden: fruit and vegetables were cultivated here, and Kabul's residents picnicked here on weekends."

"Legend reports that Vasubandhu came from the "Kingdom of Shambhala' (approximately, modern Begram, otherwise known as the ancient kingdom of Kapisha, north of Kabul) located in the Afghanistan region, north-west of Peshawar....Bagram (بگرام Bagrám), founded as Alexandria on the Caucasus and known in medieval times as Kapisa, is a small town and seat in Bagram District in Parwan Province of Afghanistan, about 60 kilometers north of the capital Kabul….in the old tradition of the 84 Mahasiddhas that the Kingdom of Uddiyana was divided between two countries, to the North and South. To the North, it bordered on the land of Shambhala (i.e., the Kingdom of Kapisa)…… Website of His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, Urgyen Trinley Dorje……….. ….http://www.dharmafellowship.org/biographies/historicalsaints/pramodavajra.htm"….

"The Kingdom of Uddiyana was divided between two countries.....to the North, it bordered on the land of Shambhala (i.e., the Kingdom of Kapisa)"……Website of His Holiness the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, Urgyen Trinley Dorje

"BEGRĀM, the site of ancient Kāpiśa, is located 80.5 km north of Kabul overlooking the Panjšīr valley at the confluence of the Panjšīr and Ḡorband rivers. Its ruins were known in the 19th century and yielded large quantities of coins dating between the period of the Greco-Bactrians and that of the Kushans (cf. C. Masson, “Memoir on the Ancient Coins Found at Behgram, in the Kohistan of Kabul,” JASB 3, 1834, pp. 153-75; 5, 1836, pp. 1-29, 537-47). It was not until 1922, however, that the ruins were correctly recognized by Alfred Foucher as those of the important ancient city of Kāpiśa (A. Foucher, “Le vieille route de l’Inde de Bactres à Taxila,” MDAFA 1, 1942, pp. 138-45). It has been suggested that the town was originally Alexandria-­under-Caucasus, founded by Alexander the Great (cf. W. W. Tam, The Greeks in Bactria and India, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1951, pp. 96ff., 460-62; H. Deydier, Contribution à l’étude de l’art du Gandhāra, Paris, 1950, pp. 94-97); but there can be no doubt that it was inhabited by the Indo-Greeks, since a coin reverse of Eukratides shows an enthroned deity between an elephant protome and a mountain symbol with the Kharoshthi inscription Kavisiye nagaradevata, i.e., “city god of Kāpiśa” (cf. A. K. Narain, The Indo-Greeks, Oxford, 1957, pp. 63­-64). According to the account of Hsüan-tsang, the city was the summer capital of the Kushan empire under Kanishka (cf. S. Beal, Buddhist Records of the Western World I, London, 1884, pp. 54-58).".....http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/begram-the-site-of-ancient-kapisa-is-located-80

Ahingaran....Wood mentions the village of I-anghera at the South end of the Parwan and Punjheer valleys.........A Journey to the Source of the River Oxus.....By John Wood

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

September 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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Sogd to Bactria Migration (4500 BC)

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"ARIA, Herat, -also called Heri, and the river which it stands is called Heri-rud. ... According to Ch. Bunsen, the migration from Sogd to Bactria, took place about 5000 BC...When the climate was altered by some vast disturbance of nature, the Arians migrated....Sogdiana in Samarkand......home of the Fire Worshippers......the River Sogd.....The second settlement was in Margiana (Merv)....the River Margus.....Third settlement was Bokhdi (Bactria/Balkh).....Bactria of the lofty banners was the seat of the Empire...The fourth settlement was Nisaya on the upper Oxus...."......Cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia....by Edward Balfour - 1871 - ‎India....https://books.google.com/books?id=i39RAAAAcAAJ

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The homeland of the Aryans, or Aryan lands was called Airyana Vaeja or Airyanam Dakhyunam in the Avesta and Arya Varta in the Vedas.......http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/images/maps/vendidadnations.jpg

"Balk is named Amu-I-Balad.....the mother of cities. It is said to have been built by Kaismurz of Persia. It was conquered by Alexander....Shams are said to worship the Sun (Shams) Pers..."...(Page 139).....Rivers: Amu (A Mu) or River Oxus, Sir or Jaxartes, Kohik or Zar-Afshatn, and the river of Kurshi and Balkh...."....Cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia...by Edward Balfour - 1871 - ‎India

3102 BC - Beginning of Kali Yuga as per the Vedas....Human civilization degenerates spiritually during the Kali Yuga,which is referred to as the Dark Age......Towards the end of this yuga, Kalki will return riding on a white horse .........In the Kalachakra tradition, Kalki is brandishing a brilliant sword in his left hand, eradicating the decadence of Kali Yuga. Lord Kalki will remove the darkness of kali yuga and establish a new yuga (age) called Satya yuga (Age of Truth) on the earth...Lord Kalki will appear in the home of the most eminent brahmana of Shambhala village......"

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"Sogdiana (/ˌsɔːɡdiˈænə, ˌsɒɡ-/) or Sogdia (/ˈsɔːɡdiə, ˈsɒɡ-/; Old Persian: Suguda-; Ancient Greek: Σογδιανή, Sogdianē; Persian: سغد‎ Soġd; Tajik: Суғд, سغد Suġd; Uzbek: Sugʻd; Chinese: 粟特, Mandarin: Sùtè)......the ancient civilization of an Iranian people and a province of the Achaemenid Empire, eighteenth in the list on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great (i. 16). Sogdiana is "listed" as the second of the "good lands and countries" that Ahura Mazda created. This region is listed second after Airyanem Vaejah, "homeland of the Aryans", in the Zoroastrian book of Vendidad, indicating the importance of this region from ancient times.......The Sogdian states, although never politically united, were centered on the main city of Samarkand. Sogdiana lay north of Bactria, east of Khwarezm, and southeast of Kangju between the Oxus (Amu Darya) and the Jaxartes (Syr Darya), embracing the fertile valley of the Zeravshan (ancient Polytimetus). ".....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogdia

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Achaemenid Provinces during the rule of Darius the Great ..... third Achaemenid king of kings (r. 522-October 486 B.C.)......Darius sent a naval reconnaissance mission down the Kabul river (aka Sita) to the Indus.....http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/darius-iii

"The Iron Gate is a defile between Balkh and Samarkand. It breaks up the mountains which extend from the Hisar range south towards the Amu Darya. In ancient times it was used as the passage between Bactria and Sogdia and was likely of great importance to any power in the region. Its name comes from the belief that an actual gate, reinforced with Iron, stood in the defile. It is located to west from Boysun, Surxondaryo Province."...... Alexey V. Arapov. "Boysun. Masterpieces of Central Asia". Retrieved 2014-03-25. "The Iron Gates were located on the old road in the canyon of Dara-i Buzgala-khana 3 km to northwest from Shurob kishlak."

"The Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC, also known as the "Oxus civilization") is the modern archaeological designation for a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia, dated to ca. 2200–1700 BC...About 1800 BC, the walled BMAC centres decreased sharply in size."

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"The early Greek historian Ctesias, c. 400 BC (followed by Diodorus Siculus), alleged that the legendary Assyrian king Ninus (2189 BC) had defeated a Bactrian king named Oxyartes in c. 2140 BC, or some 1000 years before the Trojan War. ( 1194–1184 BC).....Known as Bactra to the ancient Greeks, Balkh is found in northern Afghanistan and is descibed as the 'Mother of Cities' by Arabs. It reached its peak between 2,500 BC and 1,900 BC prior to the rise of the Persian and Median empires. "

"The Avesta's Farvardin Yasht - the five nations mentioned are Airyana Vaeja (called Airyanam Dakhyunam in the Yasht) as well as four neighbouring lands. These four lands neighbouring Airyana Vaeja are Tuirya, Sairima, Saini and Dahi. Since -nam is a usual ending for many Avestan nouns, the nations are also named as Airyanam, Tuiryanam, Dahinam, Sairimanam and Saininam....Kava Vishtasp, Kava being a title of the Kayanian kings of Bakhdhi / Balkh, is mentioned in the Farvardin Yasht....Bakhdi is listed as a nation in the Vendidad but not in the Farvardin Yasht. These later texts also tell us that Zarathushtra died in Bakhdi/Balkh, killed by a Turanian.......Balkh is directly south of Samarkand over an eastern spur of the Pamir mountains. The predecessors of present day Samarkand and Balkh are among the first nations listed in another (and later) book of the Avesta - the Vendidad. ...".....http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/aryans/airyanavaeja.htm

"Migration of the Aryans.....Before the era of legendary King Jamshid, see (Aryan Prehistory and Location of Aryan Homeland), the original Aryan homeland in the Avesta, Airyana Vaeja, could not have been very large. However, starting in the Jamshidi era and continuing up to the establishment of the Achaemenian Persian empire under Darius the Great, the Aryan lands did grow considerably in size.....The Zoroastrian Avesta, the Hindu Vedas and other texts tell us that the Aryans migrated out of Airyana Vaeja and that the lands associated with the Aryans increased in size for the following reasons:
1. An increase in population during the Jamshidi era.
2. Climate change to severe winters and short summers.
3. Trading with neighbouring lands and settlement of significant populations in these lands.
4. Establishment of kingdoms through settlement or conquest. A federation of these kingdoms during the Feridoon Era / Pishdadian dynasty. 5. Inter-Aryan wars. The schism between the Aryan religious groups, the Mazda-Asura worshippers and the deva worshippers...... cf. reign of King Vishtasp and life of Zarathushtra.
6. Establishment of the Persian empire that included the original federation of kingdoms as well as additional lands. "....
http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/aryans/airyanavaeja.htm

"Hara Berezaiti, the Hara Mountains.....The Mehr Yasht at 10.13 and 14 states that the Aryan abode (airyo-shayanem) was "where the high mountains (garayo berezanto), rich in pastures and waters, yield plenty to the cattle", and that when the Sun rises above the taro (peaks - see further discussion below) of the Hara, it casts its golden rays down on the abode of the Aryans......."Hara Berezaiti". The modern word Alburz is said to be derived from Hara Berezaiti....the Alburz (Hara) mountains......The one mountain range that fits this description very well is the Hindu Kush....."As recently as the 19th century, a peak in the northernmost range in the Hindu Kush system, just south of Balkh, was recorded as Mount Elburz in British army maps (i.e. the western arm of the Hindu Kush (Sanskrit as Pāriyātra Parvata and in Ancient Greek as the Caucasus Indicus)." The same mountains are also called the Aparsen (likely Gk. Paropamisus) in the Bundahishn. We are also given to understand that the highest peak of the Caucasus is also called "Elbrus". The poet Ferdowsi's references to the Alburz in his epic, the Shahnameh, lead us to the environs of Hind, perhaps meaning the mountains of the Upper Indus, the Hindu Kush, Pamirs, Karakorum and Himalayas - the Alburz or Hara Berezaiti of old. Strabo would call the Hara Berezaiti the Taurus Mountains, a string of mountains that ran from Turkey to the boundaries of China...Mary Boyce informs us that when the Khotanese Saka became Buddhists, they referred to Mt. Sumeru of Buddhist legends as Ttaira Haraysa, the peak of Hara. ."....... http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/aryans/location.htm#mountains

"Pre-Achaemenid period. Before the arrival of Iranian peoples in Central Asia, Sogdiana had already experienced at least two urban phases. The first was at Sarazm (4th-3rd m. BC), a town of some 100 hectares has been excavated, where both irrigation agriculture and metallurgy were practiced (Isakov). It has been possible to demonstrate the magnitude of links with the civilization of the Oxus as well as with more distant regions, such as Baluchistan. The second phase began in at least the 15th century BCE at Kök Tepe, on the Bulungur canal north of the Zarafšān River, where the earliest archeological material appears to go back to the Bronze Age, and which persisted throughout the Iron Age, until the arrival from the north of the Iranian-speaking populations that were to become the Sogdian group. It declined with the rise of Samarkand (Rapin, 2007). Pre-Achaemenid Sogdiana is recalled in the Younger Avesta (chap. 1 of the Vidēvdād, q.v.) under the name Gava and said to be inhabited by the Sogdians.

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

September 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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King Sophagasenus & The Kapisa Valley (206 BC)

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"Sophagasenos also spelt Sophagasenus or Sophagasenas (Sanskrit: Subhagasena) was a local King ruling in Kabul and Kapisa valley (Paropamisade of the classical writings) during the last decade of 3rd century BC..... Sophagasenus finds reference only in "The Histories" of Polybius. The identity of Sophagasenus is not clear. Many historians believe that Sophagasenus was a princely scion of the Mauryas of Magadha but others believe him to have been a non-Mauryan local ruler from the area he ruled i.e. from Kabul/Kapisa land. ....."

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"The Diadochi (Greek: Διάδοχοι, Diadokhoi, meaning "Successors") were the rival generals, families and friends of Alexander the Great who fought for control over his empire after his death in 323 BC. The Wars of the Diadochi mark the beginning of the Hellenistic period......."Ian Mladjov's Resources......diadokhoi195nbc.jpg.......https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/imladjov/home

"We do not know who the Sophagasenus was. "After Asoka's death ( 304–232 BC)...... the interest of his successors, west of Indus must have disappeared because when later on (~206 BC), Antiochus III, 6th successor of Seleucus entered the Indus valley, he was resisted not by Mauryas but by a local ruler named Subhagasena..." . One quite agrees with Dr Thapar, Dr Rawilson and other scholars as quoted above that the ancestry of Sophagasenus is unclear and uncertain and in no can it be linked to Maurya rulers of Magadha on the basis of flimsy and unreliable evidence of Taranatha who is a careless and untrustworthy writer of comparatively recent times.....http://www.liquisearch.com/sophagasenus/differing_opinions_on_the_antecedents_and_ancestry_of_sophagasenos

"Tāranātha (1575–1634) was a Lama of the Jonang school of Tibetan Buddhism. Taranatha was born in Tibet, supposedly on the birthday of Padmasambhava. His original name was Kun-dga'-snying-po, the Sanskrit equivalent of which is Anandagarbha. However, he adopted Taranatha, the Sanskrit name by which he was generally known, as an indication of the value he placed on his Sanskrit scholarship in an era when mastery of the language had become much less common in Tibet than it had once been. He was also paying homage to his Indian teacher, Buddhaguptanatha.... His best known work is the 143-folio History of Buddhism in India of 1608,which has been published in English. His other major work, The Golden Rosary, Origins of the Tantra of the Bodhisattva Tara of 1604 has also been translated into English.....

"...the story of Taranatha and one of his teachers named Buddhaguptanatha. .......Buddhaguptanatha (1514-1610? AD) was an Indian Buddhist yogin who also held and practiced several Hindu yogic traditions. Taranatha apparently discovered this fact while Buddhaguptanatha was in the midst of bestowing a series of empowerments that he himself had received from his guru, Shantigupta. Taranatha was particularly challenged by the idea that his teacher also practiced Hinduism. Sensing his student’s sectarian reaction Buddhaguptanatha became upset and abruptly left Tibet leaving the series of empowerments incomplete. It is humbling that even for a teacher as great as Taranatha, the notion of “pure” Buddhism being mixed with Hinduism was a challenge- that on some level his own sense of distinction got the better of him. ".....http://ganachakra.com/tag/buddhagupatnatha/.....Repa Dorje Odzer (Justin von Bujdoss) is the Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of New York Tsurphu Goshir Dharma Center, the North American Dharma Center of His Eminence Goshir Gyaltsab Rinpoche.

"Polybius, the Greek historian, makes reference to Sophagasenus in context with Antiochus III’s expedition across the Caucasus Indicus (Hindu Kush Mountains) in around 206 BC. Having crossed the Caucasus Mountains, Antiochus moved up to Kabul and met Sophagasenus the King with whom he renewed league and friendship he had made previously. and received more elephants until he had one hundred and fifty of them altogether. He then returned home via Arachosia, Drangiana and Karmania. No other source except Polybius makes any reference to Sophagasenus."

"Polybius (Greek: Πολύβιος, Polýbios; c. 200 – c. 118 BC) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work, The Histories, which covered the period of 264–146 BC in detail....... Polybius' Account of Antiochus III by T. S. Brown.....Phoenix......Vol. 18, No. 2 (Summer, 1964), pp. 124-136

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Map showing Bactra (Modern day Balkh, Afghanistan) (here indicated as Bactres), the capital of Bactria......208–206 BC

"The Siege of Bactra lasted from 208 to 206 BC. After defeating the Bactrians at the Battle of the Arius the Seleucids besieged the capital of Bactria until news from the west of his dominions and lack of progress against the city led Antiochus to negotiate peace with Euthydemus and lift the siege. In the peace that was agreed Antiochus recognized Euthydemus as an ally, and he gave one of his daughters as a wife to the Bactrian king."

"Bactrian campaign and Indian expedition of Antiochos III.......The year 209 BC saw Antiochus in Bactria, where the Greco-Bactrian king Euthydemus I had supplanted the original rebel. Antiochus again met with success.......Euthydemus was defeated by Antiochus at the Battle of the Arius but after sustaining a famous siege in his capital Bactra (Balkh), he obtained an honourable peace by which Antiochus promised Euthydemus' son Demetrius the hand of one of his daughters......Antiochus next, following in the steps of Alexander, crossed into the Kabul valley, reaching the realm of Indian king Sophagasenus and returned west by way of Seistan and Kerman (206/5). According to Polybius:.....'He crossed the Caucasus (Hindu Kush) and descended into India; renewed his friendship with Sophagasenus (Subhashsena in Prakrit) the king of the Indians; received more elephants, until he had a hundred and fifty altogether; and having once more provisioned his troops, set out again personally with his army: leaving Androsthenes of Cyzicus the duty of taking home the treasure which this king had agreed to hand over to him.".........Polybius 11.34, Antiochus Moves from Bactria Through Interior Asia

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"From around 180 BCE the Greco-Bactrian ruler Demetrius, conquered the Kabul Valley and parts of northwestern India. Demetrius helped established an Indo-Greek kingdom from the Hindu Kush to Mathura, which was to last in parts until the end of the 1st century BCE, and under which Buddhism was able to flourish. In particular, one of the successors of Demetrius, the Indo-Greek "Saviour king" Menander (Pali: Milinda) was a strong benefactor of the Buddhist faith at that time.".....http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?50541-Indian-faction/page4

A 15th century reconstruction (by Nicolaus Germanus) of a 2nd-century map (by Ptolemy)....Click on the map to enlarge

"Paropamisadae (Greek: Παροπαμισάδαι) is the Bactrian pronunciation of the Old Persian word Para-upari-sena (I.e "beyond the raised land"), which was then hellenized by the Greeks to Paropamisus (Greek: Παροπαμισσός) and is the old Iranian word for the district of Gandhara in western Pakistan, centered upon the cities of Peshawar and Charsadda. Upari-Sena (I.e "raised lands"), in Old Persian, refers to the Hindu-Kush mountains. Para-upari-sena (I.e "beyond the raised lands"), refers to the Peshawar Valley which is situated immediately beyond these mountains and is the location of Gandhara.....The Paropamisadae was located north of Arachosia and Drangiana, east of Aria, south of Bactria, and west of Kashmir. There were two main rivers flowing through the land, the Coas or Cophen (Κωφήν) and the Dorgamanes (Δοργαμάνης) or Orgomanes (Ὀργομάνης) farther north......The major cities of the land were the city of Ortospana (Ὀρτοσπάνα) or Carura (Κάρουρα), probably identifiable with Kabul, Gauzaca (Γαύζακα), probably modern Ghazni, Capissa (Καπίσσα) in the northeast, and Parsia (Παρσία), the capital of the Parsii."

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

August 2015

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

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