The historical site of Gandhara presents many a number of interesting features of days gone by. One such feature is a gigantic circular stone
APART from being the name of the old Peshawar Valley, Gandhara used to be the centre of the Buddhist civilization and the home to Aryans who composed Rigveda, the first of the four Vedas.
During the Achaemenian rule in Iran, Gandhara was made into a province. The emperor of Iran constructed temples all over the region, whose traces are a little hard to find in modern times. However, some beautiful Gandhara sculptures from ancient times were recovered from here in the past.
For example, the famous emaciated Siddhartha, popularly known as the ‘Fasting Buddha’, in the Lahore Museum was discovered from Shikray which is in the neighbourhood of Jamal Garhi in the Mardan division.
Megaliths means big stones, and circular figures of such stones exist in the village of Asota — at the foot of the Karamar mountain in the Swabi district of the Mardan division in the NWFP. It is a pre-Buddhist period monument, associated with the Aryans’ time.
Asota is a small village on the right bank of the Naranji stream which often destroys the crops in the summer. It is famous for its shrine of Asota Baba too. The village is in the Tappa Razar region, inhabited by the Yusufzai Pathans who still stick to their old culture and traditions. Their dress, their hospitality and their language are always admired by visitors coming from different parts of the world.
The village is situated about 12 miles in the north-east of Shahbaz Garha. It falls on the Swabi Road, along a byway to a village called Shewa.
By the roadside at Asota village, there is a circle-shaped 11ft-high mass of stone. It has 30 standing and falling stones in a 60ft diameter. The entrance to the circle is on the south-eastern side. It is said that these 30 openings between 30 stones were used as separate entrances for each day of the month by the worshipper of days of yore.
According to the legend of the Tappa Razar, once a marriage party comprising women was on its way to the bride’s house. On its way, the party was attacked by robbers. Some women vociferously prayed for their safety and were immediately transformed into a circle of upright stones. So the stones are, actually, the pious women still standing.
On Nov 5, 1921 H. Hargreaves, former curator of the Peshawar Museum and then director-general Archaeological survey of India, visited the site. He writes in a book: “Many stones that existed in the past are now missing from the circle, the best preserved portion was on the north-west. Of the outer circle of the small stones referred to by a renowned historian, there are now no surface traces, for since 1870 the adjacent land has been brought into cultivation and on the north-east is a graveyard so that the smaller stones may have been removed by cultivators or broken up to be used as headstones for graves. There is one isolated stone, however, about 80ft south of the main circle. It is stated that in 1870 there was a pillar in the centre of the circle, which was once upright. It was then thrown down and remained half hidden with earth. A big hole later on showed that the pillar had been undermined probably in search of some kind of treasure. There is now no trace of this central monolith above the ground.”
All the larger stones incline lightly inwards which may be due to an original inward slope or because of subsidence resulting from excavation in the centre of the circle. This inclination of the monoliths is not equal in all cases. About a quarter of a mile away and south of the village of Sheraghund are two monoliths, 150 yards apart from each other, were possibly made of similar stone circles.
The site is, however, also believed to be the ruins of a temple, used by worshippers of the sun at the time of Cyrus the Great prior to the cult of Zoroaster in Persia.
The historical site of Gandhara presents many a number of interesting features of days gone by. One such feature is a gigantic circular stone 
