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The account of Fa-Hien, I-Tsing and Hiuan Tsang of the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries of the CE and the archaeological remains of the Buddhist period, scattered all over the Swat valley, prove that Swat remained an important centre of Buddhism for many centuries. The art at once dedicated to the services of Buddhism in the heyday satisfied the spiritual thirst of the devotees. Today thousands of art pieces recovered from the Buddhist sites unveil the social, political, religious, economic and cultural life of the people living in that area. This work was undertaken to study the Buddhist collection of Miangul Abdul Haq Jehanzeb, the ruler of Swat Valley, populary known as Wali-e-Swat, who donated it to the Swat Museum, Saidu Sharif. The ruler was learned and enlightened person, took many steps for the development of his state. Among the three states of the northern region of Pakistan, Swat was the only one providing to its people quality education, health facilities and good communication system available at that time. On the interest of European scholars, archaeological activities were started over here in the first quarter of the twentieth century (Stein 1930: 23; Berger and Wright 1940: iii) . Exploration and excavations were conducted to ascertain cultural history of the valley (Berger and Wright 1941: iv). The ruler was pleased to facilitate and encouraged archaeological work in the valley and took keen interest in the antiquities, which excited him to develop his personal collection mainly of the Buddhist Sculptures. According to the local sources, he gathered this collection from various sources.
From his personal collection, the ruler donated 262 relief panels to the Swat Museum, where they were lying in the reserve collection unstudied. This significant part of the museum property remaining out of the focus for a long time, we undertook it for the first time to document them and bring them into the main stream of research. For other sculptures, including three relief panels and one stupa model, in a private collection are also included herewith. This enhances the total number of relief panels to 266. Their artistic style, kind of material, classification on the subject matter, analysis for zonal style and reconstruction of their most probable provenance have been worked out here scientifically.