Swat: the valley that was Uddiyana

A short history

In Buddhist texts the valley appears as Oddiyana. The Gandhara grave culture was here along the middle Swat river from around 1400 BCE, and the Gandhara kingdom itself emerged around 700 BCE.

Alexander came through in 327 BCE, fighting his way to the towns the Greeks recorded as Ora and Bazira — Udegram and Barikot today. The Mauryans followed, and under Ashoka in the third century BCE Buddhism took hold properly. Under the Kushan king Kanishka the valley became a major producer of Buddhist art, and the sculpture that came out of it is what most of the world now pictures when it hears the word Gandhara.

The scale is the part that is hard to take in. When the Chinese pilgrim Faxian passed through around 403 CE he recorded five hundred monasteries in the valley.

The decline was not gradual. The Alchon Huns invaded around 465 CE and under Mihirakula Buddhism was actively suppressed. By 520 the monk Song Yun found the area in ruins. Xuanzang, later, counted 1,400 monasteries of which most were abandoned. The Hindu Shahis ruled from the eighth century with their capital at Udegram; by around 1000 CE the valley was predominantly Hindu, and Muslim not long after.

In the modern era Swat was a princely state that acceded to Pakistan at Partition and governed itself until it was merged into West Pakistan in 1969.

Places worth your time

Butkara Stupa

On the edge of Mingora, built under Mauryan rule in the second century BCE and enlarged repeatedly afterwards. It is a field of stone with a stupa in the middle of it and usually nobody else there.

Shingardar Stupa

A 27-metre stupa standing beside the main road in. You can see it from the car, which is a strange thing to be able to say about a structure of that age.

Barikot and Udegram

Alexander's Bazira and Ora, fortified again under the Hindu Shahis. Udegram was the Shahi capital. Italian archaeologists have worked both sites for decades.

Swat Museum, Saidu Sharif

The place to go first if you want the Gandharan sculpture to make sense before you stand in the fields it came out of.

Kalam and upper Swat

Where the valley narrows into pine forest and the river runs fast and cold. A different trip from the archaeology, three hours further up.

Before you go

April to October for the valley; December to February for snow up at Malam Jabba. About five hours from Islamabad by motorway and the Swat expressway, which makes it the easiest northern trip to add to a short stay.