MINGORA: A group of women activists and educationists on Friday urged the government to preserve the proto-historic rock paintings in Swat and highlight them in syllabus to help youths know about the Gandhara civilisation and history of Swat.

The call was given during a visit to Swat valley to study ancient rock paintings.

The rock paintings dating back to 1000-1500 BCE have been found in the mountains of Kotah and Kandak valleys of Barikot tehsil.

Women activists want such works to be highlighted in syllabus

They narrate the scenes of wild animals, warriors, archers, deities and agriculture activities of the times when written language didn’t exist in the ancient Uddiyana.

“This is simply marvelous as when I look at them they took me back to the ancient era of Swat valley. I am surprised that why no one, even highly educated people, do not know about the existence of such an important chapter of history. Nobody told us, neither our elders nor our educational institutions, about such an interesting and tangible heritage,” activist and journalist Shaista Hakim told Dawn.

She visited the sites of rock paintings in Sargah-sar, Kakai-Kandao and Dwolasmanai-Gatta areas with a group of friends and studied them in detail paintings and learned about the stories it narrated.

“Women of this area have not many opportunities to go out but I am happy that I am in the first few women of Swat, who visited rock paintings and learnt about its historical background,” said Swat University student Gulranga Ali, who was part of the women’s group.

She said she would inform other friends and family members about rock paintings in Swat.

Shehla Anjum, a Pakistani American writer, who lives in Alaska and is a frequent visitor to Swat, also visited rock paintings with the women group.

She said she had heard of Swat’s rock painting sites a few years ago but she never had a chance to see any.

“When I visited three of the more than fifty such sites in Kandak and Kotah valleys I was fascinated by what I saw. I felt admiration for those who had taken the trouble to create a record of their past,” she said, adding that the sites were difficult to access and not many people saw the paintings.

“They are neglected like Swat’s other archeological treasures. The governments, both federal and provincial, should take steps to safeguard the site and provide better access and facilities so Pakistanis can see the remains of their past and take pride in it,” she said.

The women also demanded of the government to immediately hire proper guards for rock painting sites, which are crumbling down.

Dr Luca Maria Olivieri, head of the Italian Archaeological Mission, who extensively worked on the rock paintings of Swat, said the rock-paintings of Swat-Malakand, Swabi, and Oghi-Tanawal represented a hidden aspect of the ancient culture of Gandhara.

She said the paintings represented the tradition and culture of people, who lived at the fringes of the great civilisations, who had never converted to Buddhism, and whose vital space was gradually eroded by the expansion of the urbanised cultures from the first century CE onwards.

Earlier, these people - known in the Rig Veda as Kambojas, Daradas, “people of the cliffs” - were dominant and ruled throughout a millennium in the remote mountains, valleys and territories of North-West Gandhara,” he told Dawn.

He added that the beauty and the complexity of those painted figurations still spoke to us, and talked tales of ancestral cults, bravery, horsemanship and agriculture.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2018