Mingora, Pakistan

History

The area around Mingora has long been inhabited. At Loe Banr, Butkara II and Matalai, Italian archaeologists unearthed 475 Indo-Aryan graves dated between 1520 and 170 BC and two horse skeletons. On the opposite side of the River Swat at Aligrama, near the Saidu Sharif airport, a site of Gandhara grave culture was discovered by the Italian archaeologists and dated to 1000 BC.

Buddhism arose in the region with the arrival of monks from the Gangetic plains. Under emperor Ashoka, Buddhism, specifically the Gandharan variant, became firmly established in the region which became a launching ground for Ashoka's transmission of Buddhist missionaries to the western regions from the Mediterranean and West Asia. Many Buddhist remains and carvings have been discovered near Mingora in the Jambil River Valley. At Panr, a stupa and monastery dated to the 1st century CE has been excavated. In Mingora, the 4th century Chinese Buddhist monk Faxian claimed to have seen the largest Buddhist monastery, and large carving of the foot-prints of Buddha carved on the sides of the ridges at Teerat. Excavations at the Butkara Stupa near Mingora revealed a large and imposing central stupa surrounded by more than 200 votive stupas which were discovered by Pakistani archeologist in the 20th century.

From the History section of Mingora on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.