Journal of Asian Civilizations

-2-
Buddha Life Events as Depicted in the Nimogram Buddhist
Artifacts of District Swat, Pakistan

Badshah Sardar
Sadeed Arif

Abstract
The focus of this research paper is a very rare and important collection of
artefacts excavated from the Nimogram Buddhist complex Swat. Apart
from a few art pieces, most of the antiquities are stored in the Swat
Museum. The antiquities discovered from salvage excavations conducted
during 1967 & 1968, at Nimogram Buddhist complex were neither studied
scientifically nor documented properly. Apart from a preliminary report
published by the Department of Archaeology & Museums Government of
Pakistan in 1968 (Pakistan Archaeology; Vol. 5, 1968: 116), no extensive
study of these artefacts has been conducted. This paper will address this
issue and will trace history of the collection.
Narrative stone friezes, panels and reliefs, depict the Buddha life
events, fall within the scope of this paper. The remaining artefacts of
Nimogram are beyond the scope of the paper and have been catalogued
and documented in a monograph that will be published shortly.

Swat valley
Swat valley is named after its river Su-po-fa-su-tu of Subha-vastu (Sastri
1924:93-94). The Rig-Veda mentions it as Suvastu meaning fair dwelling
(Stein 1921: 2). River Swat, the Sanskrit Suvastu and Greek Souastos or
Souastene, is a tributary of the rivers Gabral and Ushu and flows through
the length of the valley from the northeast to the southwest (Imperial
Gazetteer of India 1979: 116). Udyana of ancient Buddhist literature is
identified with the Swat valley, and Buddhism prevailed here for over a
millennium (Tucci 1958: 279). Udyana, Uddiyana, Oddiyana and
Uddyana, meaning garden, first became familiar to modern scholars
through the accounts of the Chinese pilgrims called Wu-Changna, Wu-
Chang, or Wu-Chan (Beal 1906:119). According to the Chinese records,
Udyana extended from the Hindu-Kush and Chitral in the North, to the
Indus in the South (Stein 1921: 12). Udyana, thus was comprised of the

Vol. 38, No. 2, December 2015

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