Report on a talk given by Professor Susan Whitfield, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Culture, at the South Asian Decorative Arts and Crafts Collection Trust (SADACC) on Wednesday 18 June 2025.
Susan Whitfield elucidated several important themes from the Nara to Norwich project by examining the archaeological and historical evidence for ritual landscapes in the Swat Valley of Pakistan and East Anglia. The positioning of churches, temples, and monastic sites in both regions, in Swat through Buddhism and in East Anglia through Christianity, show strategic control over route-ways. In turn, this created spiritual journeys based on narratives of travel and encountering the sacred on-route. Key to this was the art and craft adorning the temples and churches themselves.
Such landscapes during the rise of both Buddhism and Christianity were much travelled by pilgrims, merchants, diplomats, slaves and others, not only carrying goods for sale but also sharing ideas en route. Places that may seem today to be remote were connected to a vast network of routes that have come to be known as the Silk Roads. This is a term that has captured the public imagination over the past decades, conjuring worlds of long-distance travel and the trading of numerous types of goods, including people and animals, eponymously including silk itself. The Silk Roads are a shorthand for this trading network spanning much of Afro-Eurasia, beginning around the end of the 1st century BC, and made famous by later travellers such as Marco Polo, who journeyed east from Venice in the 13th century AD.
Travel was probably limited across the mountainous terrain of what is now Pakistan and central Asia before its inclusion under a single polity, the Kushan empire (1st to 4th centuries AD), which Susan argued was a major catalyst for the start of regular trade between eastern and western Central Asia and beyond. But she stressed that trade and exchange over large distances is much older by taking the example of King Tutankhamun’s burial mask inset with lapis lazuli, a stone mined in today’s eastern Afghanistan, 4000 miles away. Glass was also used in the mask, replicating lapis, and a glass bead from a 3,400 year old grave in Denmark has been found to have been produced in the same workshop. Other contemporary glass beads found in Denmark come from Nippur near Baghdad.
and glass beads.
The Swat Valley acts as a gateway to the difficult mountainous passage between west and eastern central Asia, which remains a remote and challenging journey today. During the early first millennium AD this area was ruled by the multi-cultural Kushan Empire, which grew rich on trade and were patrons of several religious traditions, including Buddhism. This may have assisted Buddhism’s establishment in this part of the world and its journey further west, possibly as far as Turkey and east into China and then to Korea and Japan. The Swat was also in the northern part of the core area of Gandhara which produced a florescence of Buddhist art in the first few centuries AD, often described as consisting of a fusion of Greek and Indian artistic traditions, and including some of the most beautiful sculpture from the ancient world. A small and portable example of this —the so-called Helgo Budda— was found on the Swedish island of Helgö in the 1950s, having travelled over 5,000 km.
Photograph: John Falconer.
Marc Aurel Stein, the Hungarian-born British archaeologist and historian of Central Asia, visited Swat in the 1920s following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. His research there was later published in an extended article, Alexander’s Campaign on the Indian North-West Frontier (1927) and later book entitled On Alexander’s Track to the Indus (1929). The site of today’s Barikot in the Swat had been identified as Bazira, which Alexander took in 326 BC. But the stronghold of Aornos, which Alexander is recorded as also having sieged and captured, was uncertain. Stein identified Pir-Sar, a mountain in the Indus Valley, as the likely location of this citadel. Stein first visited Swat in 1926 and wanted to return to carry out new explorations. He tried to organise further expeditions in 1928, 1931 and 1933 but failed, only to return in 1941 when he was 79.
the Director of the Italian Archaeological Mission, Dr Luca Olivieri, showing Stein in 1926 with the Raja of
Tangir and Shah Alam Darel: this photograph was taken by by Jahanzeb Miangul – the future Wali of Swat.
Much of what we now know, archaeologically, about Swat is produced by the Italian Archaeological Mission to Pakistan (IAMP). The IAMP began in 1955 under the directorship of Giuseppe Tucci, a scholar of Tibet and Central Asia. Tucci argued that Mountain Elum in the Swat valley was a more likely candidate for Aornos. It is visible from Barikot and a place of Hindu pilgrimage. The Mission is still going strong under the leadership of Professor Luca Olivieri, and over the past sixty years 438 sites have been archaeologically investigated in the area around Swat alone. This includes Alexander’s stronghold at Birkot, which Buddhism had reached by the 3rd century BC as shown by the recent excavation of an apsidal Buddhist temple. The IAMP work provides a rich understanding of the sacred landscape around Swat. Their work clearly shows that Buddhist temples, monasteries and shrines were carefully placed in locations that controlled and defined the landscape at key arterial locations along well-defined routes, creating a sacred narrative of place linked to religious narratives. Art and decoration were key ways of communicating these stories but this material — mainly stone relief and statuary — has long been stripped away from the buildings. Many pieces are found in museums and collections worldwide. Many of the domed stupa remain but devoid of their decorations and also, crucially, their capping chattras—sacred umbrellas—which would have nearly doubled their original height and greatly increased their visual impact. Remains of temples and shrines can be found in all the major valleys leading into the high passes from Birkot. These interconnections forming a complex lead to an understanding of how the buildings were more than just material remains but represent a way of spiritual life that used the landscape as a means of narrative.
This picture of Buddhist spiritual life in the Swat Valley during first half of the 1st millennium AD is mirrored across Eurasia later in the medieval period, from Japan in the east to Britain and Ireland in the west. Susan drew on the case study of the landscapes of East Anglia in eastern England where the establishment and development of minster churches and monasteries show a similar pattern. The work of Austin Mason and Tom Williamson reveal a commonality of landscape settings for, first, pagan early medieval cemeteries, followed by later Christian churches from the 7th century AD. They followed the routes of contact and communication, particularly the rivers and roadways.
The talk ended with a brief look at some of the similarities in art and decoration used for religious story telling. For example, the schist panels from Gandhāra, (which can be seen on this website in the exhibition area—EXH1a-d— now in the Smithsonian Museum), date from the late 2nd to early 3rd century AD and depict the four great events in the life of the Buddha: birth, enlightenment, his first sermon and his death and reaching parinirvāna. This object has a remarkable parallel in a casket, dating from AD 420-430, with four ivory panels (see EXH 2a-d) made in Rome and showing the judgement of Pontius Pilate, the denial of Peter, the suicide of Judas, the crucifixion of Jesus, the two Marys at the sepulchre and the incredulity of Thomas. This visual storytelling can be seen decorating the temples of Swat and those found throughout the Buddhist world, as well as Christian churches, including those of East Anglia.
Report by Andrew Hutcheson, July 2025.