March 6, 2005

THE name Peshawar is derived from the Sanskrit word Pushpapur meaning the City of Flowers. Fahiene, the first Chinese pilgrim called it Fl-leu-sha in AD400. Sungyun, the second pilgrim noticed it in AD520 at which time the king of Gandhara (Peshawar valley) was at war with the king of Kabul and Ghazni. He did not go on to name the city, but described it the great stupa of emperor Kanishka which is sufficient to establish its identity.

At the time of Hiuen Tsang, the third pilgrim, in AD630 the royal family did not exist and Gandhara was a dependency of Kabul. He labelled the capital as Pu-lu-sha-pu-lu which was still a great city of 40 li or 6/2/3 miles in extent.

Mihiragula the White Hun king, known as Attila of the East, had destroyed sixteen hundred stupas and monasteries of Gandhara and slain two-thirds of its inhabitants in AD530-540. Peshawar was the second capital of Gandhara in the days of the Kushan emperor Kanishka in AD78. Its first was Pushkalavati (Charasadda) and third Udabhandapura (Hund) in the NWFP.

Peshawar stands on the highway to Central Asia and South Asia and was the centre of political religious commercial and cultural activities. It is more Central Asian even today.

The Buddistic activities started with full force in this city when Kanishka became a Buddhist. It was from here that Buddhism travelled to Swat, Gilgit, Tibet, China, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Mongolia and the Far East. The journey from Peshawar took about 555 years to reach Korea and then to Nara in Japan, the country of Mahayana Buddhism.

Kasyapa Matanga went from Peshawar and introduced Buddhism in China in about the first century AD while Asvaghosa and Nagarajuna stayed in it to compose the Mahayana Buddhist tests. Majority of the Buddhists of the world are Mahayanists. Kanishka fully patronized and propagated this sect of Buddhism. Earlier Ashoka (272-37BC) had introduced Hinayana Buddhism.

Kanishka convened the fourth Buddhist Council (conference) in Gandhara, according to Chinese sources. Its venue must have been Peshawar where once stood the great monastery and stupa of Emperor Kanishka. It was attended by about 500 monks, including Vasumitra, Asvaghosa, Nagarajuna and Parsava. Vasumitra was the President and Asvaghosa the vice President of the conference.

Voluminous commentaries on the three Pitakas were prepared. The entire Buddhist literature was thoroughly examined and the comments were collected in the book Mahavibhasha. The decisions of the conference were engraved on copper plates and deposited in a stupa specially built for this purpose. Taranath, the Tibetan historian informs us that the conference settled disputes between eighteen schools of Buddhism which were all recognized as orthodox.

Kanishka planted the sapling of the Bodhi tree in Peshawar under which the Buddha had achieved the Enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in India. The Chinese pilgrims, Sungyun and Hiuen Tsang visited it as Sungyun writes that its ‘branches spread out in on all sides and whose foliages shut out the sight of the sky’. Beneath it there were four (statues of) seated previous Buddhas of the same size, 17 feet tall. Its site was in the present Pipal Mandi in Peshawar city.

The original tree died long ago due to old age. But its off shoots can still be seen there.

Fahien, saw the alms bowl of the Buddha in Peshawar himself. He states that it was held in great veneration and Kanishka built a stupa and a monastery to enshrine it. There lived perhaps 700 priests to look after it. The people used to cast flower into it. Hwui-Yung one of the companions of Fahien who lived in the temple of the Buddha’s alms bowl, died in Peshawar. Fahien went alone from here to Ningrahar in Afghanistan to the place of the Buddha’s skull bone.

“The great king, the king of kings, his majesty Kanishka”, his title is inscribed on his own life size headless statue now in the Mathura Museum in India and thus cannot be challenged. He was the founder of the greatest Kushana empire which started from the Oxus river in Central Asia and reached the Bay of Bengal. His two famous Buddhist monuments in Peshawar were a stupa and a vihara (monastery). As Fahien narrates a legend, “Anciently when the Buddha roamed in company of his disciples in this country he told Ananda his foremost disciple, ‘After my parintrvana there will be a king named Chi-ni-chia (Kanishka), who on this spot will raise a stupa”. Thus he constructed the tallest stupa over the relies of the Buddha, which once stood at Shah-ji-Dheri outside the Gunj Gate of Peshawar City. When the Chinese pilgrims Hiuen Tsang reached Peshawar. It rose to a height of 400 feet. Wood was extensively used in it and stairs were provided to ascend the stories of the stupa.

The relies of the Buddha in the form of three fragments of his bones were recovered from it during the archaeological excavations conducted by Dr D.B. Spooner, Curator of the Peshawar Museum. To its west was the monastery, which was once occupied by great scholars and monks whose number had decreased at the time of the pilgrim’s visit. They all studied Hinayana Buddhism.

In the third doubled (storied) pavilion, the scholar Parasava lived. It collapsed long ago but there existed the commemorative plaque of this name. In the east of his chamber lived Vasubandhu and his room also contained his name plaque. To the south of his house were the two storied pavilions in which Manorihita lived. These learned scholars of Peshawar had produced marvellous Mahayana Buddhist literature in this monastery. It was still flourishing as a place of Buddhist education in the ninth and tenth century when Vira Deva of Magadha (South Bihar) was sent to the great vihara of Kanishka where the best teachers were to be found and which was famous for the quietism of its frequent visitors.

This is the literary information from the travels of the Chinese pilgrims Fahien, Sung Yun and Hiuen Tsang who came to Gandhara on a pilgrimage. It refers to Kanishka, his Peshawar, his stupa and his great monastery.

The saffron yellow and orange robed monks who once begged alms in the lanes streets and bazaars of Peshawar are no more there. They have gone far far away. Once their thunderous but sweet voice in chorus arose from the Mahavihara (great monastery) of Kanishka in Peshawar which echoed and could be heard beyond the Karakoram, Hindukush and Himalayan mountains, gradually subsided with the passage of time and became inaudible. They chanted “Praise to the Blessed One, the Perfect One the fully Self-Enlightened One! I go to the Buddha for Refuge. I go the Dhamma (doctrine) for Refuge I go to the Sangha (monastic order) for Refugee”.

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