Indian Antiquary Vol 58

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 329

JONE, 1929 )
ALEXANDER'S CAMPAIGN ON THE N-W. FRONTIER
29
brought to light from the floor of one of the rooms there were some showing ornamentation similar to that found at Buddhist sites of Swat, but less finished.
What pointed to considerable antiquity was the far-advanced decay of the whole strucure as compared with the fair condition in which most of the ruined dwellings and fortified mansions dating from Buddhist times are found at Swât sites. Yet these by their position are far more exposed to erosion and other destructive factors than the very top of Bar-sar could be. The position is such as could not have been chosen for any other purpose than defence. Whether the remains indicated can go back as far as the Macedonian invasion, and whether they mark the spot where the fort erected under Alexander's orders might have stood, it is impossible to assert without thorough investigation, such as was not possible at the time of my visit. But it is certainly noteworthy that the ruined fort crowns just that height which protects the Pîr-sar plateau on the side where, as we have seen, it was most exposed to attack.
The old Gujars who had been summoned from the hamlets below as depositories of local lore (Fig. 10), knew of no special tradition attaching to those ruined walls.66 Nor had they ever heard of Alexander having visited these parts. But they had been told by their elders that Pir-sar had served as the summer abode of a Raja called Sirkap, who otherwise lived below at the village of Sarkul on the Indus opposite Thâkôt. This name of "Raja Sirkap" is widely attached to ancient sites in these parts on either side of the Indus, e.g., to the ruins of the earliest as yet explored city at Taxila. But it gives no clue beyond indicating a traditional belief that the Pir-sar plateau was occupied in early times long before the advent of Islâm. The same Gujar informants derived the name Pîr-sar from a Saiyid Pir Bêghan, who is said to have lived on the plateau before the Pathans took the land, and to have been buried as a saint at the previously mentioned Ziarat, near the centre of Pir-sar.
Whether the ground now under cultivation or occupied by Gujar huts and graveyards on Pir-sar hides any datable remains it is impossible to say. But in the mosque which lies some 300 yards south of the Ziarat there are two large carved slabs of white calcareous stone, now used to support the roof but undoubtedly ancient. Their exposed portions measure 6 feet in height, with a width of 16-17 inches and a thickness of 4 inches. They were said to have been dug up somewhere near the centre of the area some time ago. But nobody could or would indicate the exact spot; my inquiry here, as elsewhere, suggested, no doubt, an intention to hunt for buried "treasure."
There still remains the philological evidence to be set forth. It is furnished by the name Ona, in Pashtû also spelt Unra, applied to the peak rising immediately above Bûrimêr and overlooking Pir-sar. We do not know the exact indigenous form of the local name which the Greek "Aopvos was intended to reproduce. But if we assume it to have sounded Avarna, it is as easy to account for its phonetic transition into modern Una (Unra) as it is to prove that ''Aopvos was the most likely Greek rendering of it. As regards the latter, it will suffice to point to the Greek "Iuzos as the well-known rendering of the Sanskrit Himava (n), applied like its doublet 'Huwdós, Haimavata, to the Himalaya range, or what was believed by the Greeks to be a portion of it,67 That the name rendered by "Aopvos appealed to Greek ears also by its apparent Greek meaning "[the mountain) where there are no birds," is likely enough. We know from the reproductions of other Indian local names how ready Alexander and those with him were to seek an echo of Greek words in the Indian appellations
56 Among then was Ibrahîm Bâbâ, a venerable old man, who was brought up with much trouble in a litter and declared to be a fountain head of local information. Ho remembered having fought as a man between twenty and thirty against the British at the Ambia Pass in 1862.
67 01. Arrian, Indike,' ii. 3. In Ptolemy's Geography Imaos undoubtedly represents the great meridional rango which joins the T'ien-shan to the Hindukush,