The 8th Wonder of the World Buried In Peshawar?

PESHAWAR: One day as Buddha was travelling through the kingdom of Purushapura he stopped midway, turned to his disciple and said, “After my parinirvana (final death), there will be a king named Kanishka, who on this spot will build a stupa.” Four hundred years later, a boy named Kanishka was born into the world. He went to become the greatest king of the first century Kushan dynasty that ruled over the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent, and Afghanistan. Staying true to the prophecy, Kaniskha built an imposing structure, 400-cubit-high, adorned with gold and silver. The story was narrated by Fa-hsien, one of China’s greatest travellers of the fifth century. And the place, where Buddha foresaw his burial, is present day Peshawar.

In 1909, the stupa was rediscovered, when an American archaeologist uncovered a bronze casket that carried Buddha’s bone fragments and ashes. The British later gifted the relics to Burma, while the casket is today at display at the State Bank in Islamabad. A replica can be found at the museum in Peshawar.

As for the stupa, located outside Peshawar's walled city, it has faded into oblivion. Few traces of the majestic structure remain today.

Dr Sayed Amjad Hussain, a prominent US-based historian and scholar, has urged the Pakistani government to request United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to declare the monument as the eight wonder of the world. “The stupa represents the golden era of the Gandhara civilisation,” Hussain tells Geo.TV. “The government can restore it by building an alternative stupa at the site.”

When Fa-hsien first saw the Buddha monument he described it in the following words, “Of all the stupas and temples which [the travellers] saw in their journeys, there was not one comparable to this in solemn beauty and majestic grandeur.” In another account, narrated by him, when a foreign king attacked Peshawar and attempted to snatch the relic “not even eight elephants could move it".

In their memoirs, the Chinese pilgrims and the traveller, Hiuen Tsang, who passed through the area, called the stupa the “tallest architectural building” in this part of Asia, measuring over 200 meters in height, equivalent to a 13-storey building. 

“The stupa was a marvel of its time,” explains Hussain. “If we compare it to modern-day structures, the Kanishka Stupa was almost 86 metres shorter than the Eiffel tower in Paris.”

However, Dr Abdul Samad, director of the government’s archaeology and museums department, is skeptical of the structure’s religious importance. The Kushans were Central Asians, he says, who used Buddha’s legacy for political gains. “No one can confirm if the relics recovered from Peshawar belonged to Buddha or not.”

Pinpointing the exact location of Buddha’s burial is difficult. Some scholars argue that the sacred ashes were divided into eight parts and then taken to various countries. Last year, archeologist confirmed that they found the remains of Buddha’s skull in the Chinese city, Nanjing.

Although the veracity of the relics can be questioned, Samad does agree the site, where they were found, fulfils all the requirements to be declared a wonder of the world. The criteria for a building or monument to be included in the UNESCO’s World Heritage list, is that, amongst other things, it should be a masterpiece of human creative genius and an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble.

Today, the area where the stupa once stood, is dotted with houses. All that remains of the stupa is a large mound.

There are 6,000 historical sites in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to the provincial government, and protecting all of them is a tough task. “UNESCO can barely pay attention to the sites already identified as protected. So, requesting them to designate the Kanishka Stupa as the eighth wonder is a lot to ask,” says Samad. “UNESCO recently added 10 sites from Pakistan to its tentative list, not a single one was from our province.”