Travelogues  
Khat e Kabuliwala
Inside an ancient temple near Mazar-e-Sharif
by Rajesh Talwar

As a child I had heard my father recite a couplet that extolled the virtues of simple village or small town living in comparison to those who lived in the bigger cities.

Sabse Accha Apna Chaubara
Na Balkh na Bukhara

It must have been a fairly ancient expression that had come down the generations for in the modern world there are newer global cities that have long replaced Balkh, Bukhara or Samarkand in the public consciousness.

You visit the relatively recent past when you travel on the new freshly laid out roads from Mazar e Sharif to Balkh for you pass by the killing fields where the Hazaras were massacred by the Taliban a few years ago, the Russian style barracks that were destroyed by the Mujahiddin as well as the odd disused and rusted Russian tank lying in the fields beside the highway like an avante garde installation. You also find evidence of an older time when you visit the ruins of the city of Balkh. The entire area should be an archeologist’s paradise.

Just a few kilometers from the city of Mazar e Sharif on the return journey from the town of Balkh, my driver Ahmed asked me if I wanted to look at an old monument frequently visited by Afghans from the neighboring villages. The villagers, he said, combined religious piety with a sort of outing and came to the place in order to picnic inside the structure and also pay their regards to the shrine of a holy man that lay just beside the monument. We had time on our hands and I readily agreed.

We took a turn off the spanking new main highway built with assistance from the Japanese aid agency, Jaico and traveled but a few kilometers on broken down country roads that had still to be given attention and there a little ahead we saw half a dozen still standing thick pillars of what most certainly an ancient monument or building of some kind.

We parked our vehicle and walked past fields growing cannabis to reach the site of our exploration. The structure was ancient but a modern metal contraption now provided a temporary roof and also gave support to two of the pillars. Beside the monument there was a small grave of one Haji Biyauda, a religious man who had completed a Haj twice by walking all the way to Mecca and it was this small shrine that people came to visit.

Even at the time we approached the structure from a distance my first thought was how reminiscent it was for me of ancient Hindu temples I had seen in India and Nepal. However I quickly dismissed the thought from my mind for I did not hope to find a Hindu temple here in the northernmost part of Afghanistan, just an hour’s drive from the Uzbekistan border.

The caretaker was now whispering to Ahmed, even though there was no one in the vicinity for miles in any direction. Ahmed translated for me a few moments later. Apparently, said Ahmed, the caretaker had learnt that the structure was a pre Islamic Indian temple.

And as I went around and around the monument searching for clues I finally came to a place where the mud had not settled so deeply. There I could spot the faint outlines of certain figures beneath the mud, which could certainly be the figures of Hindu Gods and Goddesses. In this section of the monument, the figures could be barely made out, but yet they were distinctly present and could not be denied just as inside a modern building a single whitewash may not completely obliterate what lay there previously.

My initial confidence that I was inside a Hindu temple gave way to doubt. As I gazed into my surrounding, smelling the hashish that grew all around, I became less confident and it occurred to me that it could as well be a Buddhist temple. I am familiar with Buddhist temples in South East Asia having spent hours inside Buddhist temples in Bangkok but am not at all familiar with the architecture of Buddhist temples that had been constructed west of present day India and this temple which I thought was Hindu could just as easily be a Buddhist temple. The carvings and figurines that I thought represented Hindu Gods and Goddesses could just as easily be artistic depictions of the life and times of Gautama, the Buddha.

My doubts regarding whether the temple was Buddhist or Hindu could easily be settled by some clever and careful removal of the mud that caked the pillars by someone experienced in these activities. The structure had received support from the French Government and yet no effort had been made by them to scrape off the mud that barricaded the pillars of the temple to reveal what lay beneath the pre Islamic monument.

We approached the caretaker for further information on this account and in a confiding tone he whispered that this was a careful and deliberate decision. The existence of the temple might offend the religious sentiments of those who came to revere the mazar of Haji Biyauda and they might then attempt to destroy it. Although this was the north, Balkh close by used to be a Taliban stronghold and had only recently been declared to be a safe area for the international community to visit. The caretaker did not wish the pillars to be destroyed also because he had an economic interest in the continuity of the structure.

With the addition of the temporary roof that stood on the pillars a physical station had been provided beneath which visitors to the mazar could be properly seated, protected as it were from the vagaries of nature. At the moment the place was popular because after venerating the shrine the village folk could take out food and have a small picnic beside the pillars, which could in turn be followed by a walk to a small river that flowed nearby that was a place to wash and swim in. The caretaker managed the place much like a priest and received some small donations from visitors to the site.

As I left the place I could not help but think that this ancient structure, be it Hindu, Buddhist or Zoroastrian was a metaphor for modern day Afghanistan. The structure of this temple had been propped up through the assistance of the international community just as is the case with Governmental Institutions in Afghanistan today. Attempts are being made to create a tolerant multi ethnic Afghanistan in which all communities will have a stake and differences of opinion and belief will be tolerated. The preservation of this and such other ancient monuments, should they survive, will be a testimony to new beginnings in this troubled land.   

November 12, 2006

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