Minar-i Chakri

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Minar-i Chakri in 1836 drawn by Charles Masson

Minar-i Chakri (or Minar-i Chakari ; for the meaning see below ) was a 28.5 meter high column made of hewn stones on a ridge 16 kilometers as the crow flies southeast of Kabul in Afghanistan . She was one of many Buddhist buildings which at the time of Kuschanareiches had been built in the area of Kabultals and is dated to the end of the first or at the beginning of the 2nd century. Chr.. Apart from the lack of a top closure, the monument remained relatively well preserved until the 1980s, but was badly damaged by tank shells during the Soviet-Afghan war and collapsed in March 1998.

location

Minar-i Chakri lay directly on the northern slope of the Shakh Baranta range of hills, which drops here 600 meters to the plain of Kabul. The city can be seen from above and the snow-capped mountains of the Hindu Kush in the background . To the south there is a plateau up to another mountain range with peaks of over 3000 meters. The pillar was a widely visible marker on an old trade and pilgrimage route, the closest connection, that of the regional capital of the Greco-Bactrian Empire Alexandria on the Caucasus , near today's Tscharikar 65 kilometers north of Kabul, over the 1900 meter high Khurd Kabul -Pass led in the southeast towards Jalalabad and India. Under the rule of the Kushanas, the Greek province (satrapy) Paropanisadai was renamed Kabulistan and the provincial administration was moved to Kabul. During the reign of King Vima Kadphises , from around 100 AD, the empire began to expand into India and the economic boom, which was reflected in the construction of Buddhist monuments and monasteries around the capital. This also included the construction of two Buddhist columns ( Sanskrit Stambha ) in the south of the city: the 19-meter-high Surkh Minar (“red tower”), which collapsed in an earthquake in spring 1965, and the Minareh Syah, which is closer to and at the foot of the mountain ("Black tower") on the mountain, which was named Minar-i Chakri in the 19th century .

New discovery and investigations

As was the case with numerous other art-historical finds in Afghanistan, the first news of the Minar-i Chakri accidentally found its way into Western antiquity through British soldiers who were exploring the country in the 19th century. British doctor JG Gerard, who had returned to Bukhara from a secret military mission , published an initial note in 1834 about the column he had seen the previous year. In Kabul he met James Lewis, a deserter from the British-Indian army, who among other things collected coins from robbery excavations of stupas and called himself Charles Masson . Since Buddhist stambhas do not contain relic chambers, their search here was unsuccessful. Only after his return to London in 1841 did Masson publish a detailed report and the drawing above about the "Greek monument". The withdrawal of the British army at the end of the First Anglo-Afghan War occurred with great losses in 1842 and passed the column on the way to Jalalabad. Some of the survivors later reported or left records.

These incidental publications prompted Alexander Cunningham , the first director of the Archaeological Survey of India , to inspect the column and prepare a detailed report in 1872 . He did not consider the monument to be Greek, but dated it to the Kushana period. He recognized that an important element was that the base must originally have been stepped. At the end of 1880, hundreds of British soldiers were looking for insurgents along the mountain path. Among them was the civilian J. Burke, who took the first known photograph of the monument. When the photo was published in 1881 in the regimental chronicle, the solid mortaring of the slate is mentioned and the age is roughly estimated at 2000 to 3000 years.

More detailed investigations were carried out in the middle of the 20th century. Based on a recommendation by Klaus Fischer , who provided a description in 1955, the architect Christof Dorneich took measurements ten years later. In 1974 and 1975/76, Afghan and British restorers were able to stabilize the inclined position of the column, which was inclined by four degrees to the southeast, by inserting stones and concrete in the base area. Restoring the original shape of the plinth would have meant too much effort, but an iron framework that reached up to the top allowed restorations on the shaft and a detailed inventory of the entire structure.

Design

The footprint of the stepped plinth should once have been eight meters square, even on early drawings only a much narrower, rounded plinth area can be seen. The length of the cylindrical column shaft was twelve meters. The inclination of two meters from the vertical can be explained by greater erosion of the joints by wind and rain from the south side. On the shaft there was a high, intricately designed capital, the shape of which is reminiscent of the monolithic stone pillars of King Ashoka in the 3rd century BC. BC, which in turn had Achaemenid columns from Persepolis as a model. The motif of the hemispherical shapes arranged against one another is of Indian origin, it can be found on the base zones of Buddha statues and symbolizes a fire altar. Here it becomes an indication that Buddha was worshiped with the pillar. At the time of the Kushana kings it was customary to cultivate the cult of Iranian religions with fire and at the same time to worship Buddha. The fire temple Surkh Kotal was one place of such syncretistic beliefs . There are Kushana coins that show an altar of fire and Buddha on the other side.

The masonry was made with the stone of the area, which is light granite and green slate. The outer edge was 30-50 centimeters thick and consisted of neatly joined thin layers of dark slate, so that little mortar was required. Rough granite stones and a lot of mortar were filled in the middle. To connect the inner filling and the outer edge, light granite slabs were inserted at irregular intervals, which protruded slightly and gave the cylindrical shaft a lively surface. The design of the former wall surface can only be determined through comparisons; no traces have been preserved. In the town of Mingaora , which is located in the Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa , Pakistan , smaller Buddhist stambhas from the 1st century AD, covered with stucco and richly decorated, were excavated near stupas . The capitals in Persepolis were also covered with stucco.

meaning

The nickname "Alexander Column" used by the local population does not do justice to the meaning. As early as 1855 James Fergusson rejected the reference to Alexander, called the column Buddhist and dated it to the 3rd or 4th century AD. Opinions differ on the conclusions drawn from the two names regarding the missing Top.

Minar-i Chakri

Minar is derived from the Arabic manara ("place that gives light", "lighthouse") and is related to the Turkish minarat and describes the tower of a mosque. Chakri corresponds to Sanskrit Cakra , the Buddhist wheel of teaching that Buddha set in motion with his teaching ( Dharma ). As a result, the column should have had a wheel symbol at its top, an ancient symbol for the sun chariot and the Buddhist eight-part path. The interpretation is obvious, but not mandatory.

Minar-i Chakari

The word Chakari could be a proper name, contained as a short form in Minareh Siah Chakari ("the black stone of Chakari"). Chakari is the name of a dry valley in the south and a village at its end. This word is supported by the fact that in Islamic times both the knowledge of the meaning of Buddhist buildings and their names were lost. Stupa ruins have usually been given names that have to do with their surroundings. Consequently, any other upper closure is also conceivable. - The famous Ashoka column of Sarnath is crowned by four lions ( Indian national coat of arms ). A rectangular platform was discovered at the top in 1976 due to the possibility of access via the scaffolding, and possibly the remains of a high umbrella mast, which would correspond to the honor umbrellas ( chattravali ) at the top of a stupa and, formally speaking, would be the best way to end it.

Axis of the world

If the column was erected on its own on the mountain, it could have served to perpetuate a historical event, but remains in the vicinity suggest a not yet excavated Buddhist monastery, within sight of the monastery complex around the Shewaki stupa in the Kabul valley. In early Hinayana Buddhism, Buddha was not yet represented figuratively; a stambha was understood as an iconic image of the enlightened one. When the Mahayana doctrine began to spread from the 2nd century AD , the stupa moved into the center of the monastery complex and stambhas were given supporting roles on the edge.

Alexander Cunningham was the first to draw attention to the once stepped pedestal and associated this form with representations on Indian bas-reliefs and column bases in Mathura, northern India . This base cannot have had a static function on the rocky subsoil. For this, the steps have an important symbolic meaning, they stand for the elevation of the building from the surrounding world. In a cosmogonic model, the column embodies the world axis , which rises on the base as a primeval hill in the center of the world. This myth, which is spread beyond Asia, can be found in the biblical "they made ... stone marks ... on all high hills" ( 1 Kings 14:23) and extends to the tradition of stepped plinths in medieval Europe on which cult crosses were erected. Thus, 500 years after his enlightenment, Gautama Buddha was honored in the center of the world with a widely visible minar on the mountain.

literature

  • Warwick Ball: The Monuments of Afghanistan. History, Archeology and Architecture. IB Tauris Publishing House, London 2008. ISBN 1-85043-436-0
  • Warwick Ball, AW McNicoll and GK Rao: The Minar-i Chakari. Report on the Society's preservation work. In: South Asian Studies, Volume 6. 1990, pp. 229-239
  • Christof Michael Dorneich: Minar-I Tschakari. Illustrated study of the history and art history of the two Buddhist pillars near Kabul. Diploma thesis, University of Stuttgart 1968
  • Heinrich Gerhard Franz: The Chakri Minar as a Buddhist cult column. In: Afghanistan Journal. Graz, Jg. 5, Heft 1, 1978, pp. 96-101
  • John Irwin: The cult column 'Minar-i Chakri' and its forgotten meaning In: Jakob Ozols, Volker Thewalt (Ed.): From the east of the Alexander empire. Peoples and cultures between Orient and Occident. Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India. DuMont documents, Cologne 1984. pp. 181-193 ISBN 3-7701-1571-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Newsletter of the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage, May 1999, p. 6 f. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014 ; accessed on November 29, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Volker Thewalt: Two photos of the Minar-i Chakri, 1969
  3. ^ Christof Michael Dorneich: Minar-i Chakri. Afghanistan's Lost and Unsolved Architecturals Riddle of Great Antiquity. SPACH Library Series, 1999 ( Memento of July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Coinarchives.com: India, Kushans. Kanishka I. Fig. Of a Kushana coin, shows King Kanishka at the sacrificial altar on the obverse and the seated Buddha on the reverse.
  5. ↑ James Fergusson: The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture. Beeing a Concise and Popular Account of: The Different Styles of Architecture Prevailing in all Ages and Countries. London 1855, part 1, p. 8. - Contains an illustration of the smaller Surkh Minar. Online as a PDF at Google book, 26.9 MB
  6. ↑ Warwick Ball, in Studia Iranica 13, 1984. According to: Dorneich: Minar-i Chakri , 1999, p. 12 ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / spach.af
  7. ↑ S.-W. Breckle: Shewaki, Buddhist stupa in the Kabul Basin, on the way to the Lathaband Pass, May 1967 Photo.
  8. ↑ John Irwin, p. 185

Coordinates: 34 ° 35 ′ 0 ″  N , 69 ° 17 ′ 0 ″  E