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The mighty Karamar
By Fidaullah Sehrai
Karamar is a mountain in Mardan division. Full of historical details, the ancient highway still runs by Karamar. It starts from Peshawar and after passing through Charsadda, Shahbaz Garha, it reaches Hund, the historic fort on Indus. There is also a natural pass through the mountain called Gailey-Kandao. It connects Sudam Valley and Buner with the ancient highway at Baghicha Dheri. Karamar rises to a height of 3480 feet above the sea. The mountain was once full of Hindu temples and Buddhist stupas and monasteries. People constructed them near the natural springs. In addition, tanks and ponds were built to store the spring and rainwater for the benefit of monks, teachers, students and pilgrims. The locals now remember the mountain as the location of the romantic legend of Yusaf Khan and Sher Bano, a modern Pushto ballad composed by Ali Haider of Ismaila village.
Today, Karamar is only a shadow of its glorious past. Many of its Gandhara sculptures and relics of the Hindu past have been taken away. In 1871-72, Colonel Hastings, the then Assistant Commissioner of Mardan, directed the digging and exploration of Sudam Valley by sappers. Another British officer, Lieutenant Maxwell conducted some excavation of the ruined buildings at Kotki on the Karamar. Later HBW Garrick visited the site in 1881-82 and noted a ruined temple and a monastery, with cells for the accommodation of monks. He also saw a broken statue of the Buddha with traces of gold at Uria, close to Kotki, which was excavated by the sappers.
A stair-risers relief from the Karamar is now in the Lahore Museum. It narrates Saddanta Jataka, the tale of the six-tusked elephant. As the story goes, the Buddha was once born as a marvellous six-tusked elephant. He lived happily in a forest with his two elephant wives. However one day, all that changed when he, unintentionally, shook a tree. Flowers, pollen and tender shoots fell on one of his wives. At the same time, the wind threw dead leaves, dried twigs and red ants on the other. This made the latter wife jealous who starved herself to death.
She prayed to be reborn as a beautiful woman, which she did and went on to become the Queen of Banaras. Even as queen, she remembered how badly she was treated in her previous life. And therefore, wanted revenge from the Buddha who had ignored her in her previous life. To this end, the most skilled hunter in the land was hired and assigned to kill the king elephant and bring its tusks. The hunter set off on this mission of revenge and eventually found the elephant in the forest. He shot his poisonous arrow from a hidden pit. The injured beast surrendered to the hunter so that he could cut off its tusks. The hunter did so and brought the tusks to the queen in her palace. He also related how the poor animal had generously offered its tusks. The queen was ashamed and died of a broken heart.
This popular Buddhist story is also carved on the crossbars of the great stupa of Sanchi in the former state of Bohpal and painted on a wall in Cave X at Ajante.
Hieun Tsang, the Chinese pilgrim, visited Shahbaz Garha in AD620 because it was here that the Buddha was born as Prince Wessentara. During his visit, he climbed the Mekha Sanda Hill and the Karamar also. It was during these travels that he saw a statue in blue stone of the Hindu goddess Parvati, the wife of god Shiva, on the Karamar. At the foot of the hill there was a temple of the god himself, to whom the Pashupatas and Ashsmeared devotees paid their respects.
To this date, the inhabitants of the area avow that the figure was self-wrought. To this miraculous natural statue of the goddess, a multitude of people used to come from all over India. Down below the Karamar there still exits the village Shewa where once stood the temple of the Hindu god Shiva. The temple is mentioned in the works of Hieun Tsang. His account is vital reading if one is to understand the religious history of Gandhara, before the arrival of Islam. He has mentioned the temples, stupas and monasteries where Hinduism and Buddhism were practised. Gandhara was not wholly Buddhist, as presumed by some scholars. Asoka and Kaniskha made Buddhism a state religion and it was the religion of the majority. Hinduism survived but was the religion of minority. It re-appeared again to become the majority religion after the decline of Buddhism and survived till the arrival of Mehmood of Ghazna.
The temple of Shiva and image of Parvati have vanished. But the village of Shewa still survives at the foot of the Karamar to tell visitors the story of the rise and fall of Hinduism and Buddhism in Gandhara, the ancient name of Peshawar Valley.