HERITAGE: STORIES IN STONE
In 1907, when the Victoria Memorial Hall in Peshawar became a museum, the British embarked on building a similar memorial in Kolkata (Calcutta then), India, in memory of Queen Victoria who had died in 1901. The British Viceroy in India, Lord Curzon — driven to create a fitting memorial to the Queen, also the “Empress of India” — said, “Let us, therefore, have a building, stately, spacious, monumental and grand, to which every newcomer in Calcutta will turn, to which all the resident population — European and Native — will flock, where all classes will learn the lessons of history, and see revived before their eyes the marvels of the past.”
Today, Curzon’s epithets wouldn’t be misplaced if used for the Peshawar Museum, formerly the Victoria Hall. It is “grand, stately and spacious,” and the phrase “marvels of the past” fits even better, given the cornucopia of ancient Gandhara art the museum boasts. There is little here about the British and the Raj whose memory Curzon wanted to preserve, but for the wonder and wealth of the Gandhara civilisation (1500BCE-500BCE) in all its historical and spiritual significance, Peshawar museum is the place to “flock”. This significance, universal as it is, takes on an immediate, direct relevance when you know that Peshawar and the surrounding valleys of Swat, Buner, Bajaur, Dir were Gandhara proper — the very “cradle” of that civilisation, as historians would tell you. The boundaries of Gandhara Greater go beyond up to Kabul valley in Afghanistan and Potohar plateau in Pakistan.