Where did the 1800-year-old stone carvings in Dir district come from?

When Akbar Khan came to know the historical importance of Dir district, he started studying the historical books in which he found inscriptions (imprints) on some stones in the Sadu region.

After that, they decided to remove these stones. So last year he succeeded in his endeavor and rediscovered Sidhu Rock Crawling. Akbar told the researchers that these are 1800-year-old paintings.

Akbar Khan, 61, is a social activist and has worked with various non-governmental organizations.

He has extensive experience in archeology and has been trying to locate historical sites in Dir district for the past 10 years.

Sitting among hundreds of books in the basement of his house, Akbar Khan told Independent Urdu that he had a passion for archeology from earlier and now his life is spent in finding stones.

Sadu is a small village located on the Chitral road in Dir district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where huge stones on both sides of the Panjkora river hide centuries-old history in its foothills.

These stones are located on the right side of the famous Zolam Bridge. Akbar Khan said that this historical place is mentioned in the research papers and books of some researchers but these researchers did not visit this place themselves.

According to Akbar, Prof. Dr. Mohammad Naseem of Peshawar University’s Department of Archeology worked on these ruins for the first time at the local level and last year his research paper was also published at the same place.

According to the paper, these motifs were first discovered in 1872 by a researcher named Alexander Kinggam, who is mentioned in the ‘Archaeological Survey of India’. After that Akbar Khan rediscovered it.

In the paper, Dr. Naseem wrote that when Akbar Khan shared with him the photographs of the stones at the site, he himself visited the site to better study the inscriptions on the stones.

‘One advantage we got from this visit was that we also found traces of an old bridge on the Panjkora river near the stones.’

According to the paper, the above-mentioned carvings were done on various stones which are located around the British-era Zolam Bridge on the Panjkora River.

These bridges probably connected the Peshawar Valley to Bajaur and Afghanistan. This bridge still exists which connects Dir and Bajaur districts.

Which language letters are written on the stones?

Akbar Khan said that letters were written on the stones in the Indian script Kharushti. It diverged from the Aramaic script around 800 BC, while the Kharoshti script was introduced here in the 4th BC.

“By the fifth century AD, this famous common script was made here, whose iconography was also found in Central Asia, China, Taxila, Jamal Garhi, while the Khrushti script has been the accepted common script of the Gandhara civilization.”

According to Dr. Naseem’s thesis, these letters are about 1800 years old, that is, they were written between the first and third centuries before Christ.

Akbar Khan said that it was a post-Greek period, that is, in the 3rd century, the Mauryan dynasty (which included most of the Indian region) ruled here, and later came the Indo-Aryans and settlers.

Akbar Khan said, ‘Evidence shows that Aristotle crossed this river in this area or at a place above and below it, while in the periods following the Greeks, it seems that people used the same route to reach Bajaur because There are some such monuments in Bajaur which can be linked with them.’

In his research, Dr. Naseem has also translated the inscription on a stone, which is as follows.

‘provided a dwelling place to rest’. Similarly, on another stone it is written ‘the daughter of’, while on one stone it is written ‘of the son of Malikava’, which means the son of a king, while it is also written that ‘creation’ of Raja Hisa’.

Dr. Naseem translated this sentence as follows: Creation of Raja Hisa, the son of Malikava or with less probability, ’cause to be done for the Haisarya, the son of Malikava. The Urdu translation of which is: ‘Made by Raja Hisar who is the son of the king.’

According to the paper, the word ‘malika’ used in the inscription is Iranian for king, in Sanskrit the word is used for bird, while the same word is used in Gandhara, which apparently suggests that these letters were written 238 years ago. were used in the Parthian period in Christ.

It is written in the paper, ‘It is not possible to say clearly what is meant by these words, but this much shows that some work was ordered to be done on the orders of the Hussar and perhaps to build something here. It has been said. Evidence of this is the remains of a bridge built over the Panjkora river in the same area.’

Dr. Naseem also wrote in his research that the inscriptions show that they were not written by a single person at one time but by different people who passed through here in different periods, while it is not clear how important this area was in that period. was

However, according to the paper, it is found that these maps are not of pre-historic period but of historic period.

Was this place a trading center in the past?

Dr. Naseem wrote about the importance of this place that it is a remote area where there was no communication system before the present road and people used mules, foot or other animals for transportation.

According to Dr. Naseem, since these inscriptions are found on stones on both sides of the river, it is most likely that this area was a trading center and in summer when the flow of water in the Panjkora river was high, traders used to stay here with their goods.

The importance of this place can also be estimated from the fact that during the British era, a wooden bridge was built on the river from where the British army fought against Umara Khan, the then Sardar of Jandol Wadi in Dir district in April 1895. She used to cross to fight.