Tahkāl: the nineteenth–century record of two lost Gandhāra Sites

Abstract

The name Tahkā is today remembered by archaeologists only as the provenance of the famous Gandhāra statue of Kuvera in the Lahore Museum (fig. 1:Lahore 3/G101). Little is now known concerning the site itself, its precise location, or whether any architecural remains are still visible on the ground. Yet a hundred years age, the area around Tahkāl contained the most prominent Gandhāra ruins in the immediate neighbourhood of Peshawar, attracting the attention of all interested visitors who came to the city. It is moreover possible to construct a clear picture of the remains from their contemporary descriptions and from the forgotten archaeological record of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, the recent rediscovery of Punjab Public works Department reports of the 1870s, printed in the Punjab Government Gazette, provides many details concerning the precise nature of two of the three major Buddhist structures in this area.