Below are photos of some old Buddhist sculptures from Hadda, a historical site in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. Nangarhar lies in the east of the country and the provincial capital, Jalalabad, is just ten kilometres north of Hadda.
Nangarhar was once part of the ancient kingdom of Gandhara, a centre of Buddhist culture and religion before the Muslim conquest. Historic remains from this period reportedly include a royal castle, ruins in the Memla area of Khogyani district, tombs in Bahrabad, and the Greco-Buddhist site of Hadda.
According Rafi U. Samad, author of "The Grandeur of Gandhara: the Ancient Buddhist Civilization of the Swat, Peshawar, Kabul and Indus Valleys," the Greco-Buddhist site of Hadda dates back to the 2nd century CE and was mentioned in the accounts of two Chinese pilgrims:
The region figures prominently in the accounts of Chinese pilgrims, Fa-Hsien and Hsiuen Tsang. Fa-Hsien visited Hadda at the start of the 5th century. He found 500 monks residing in the monasteries there. Hsiuen Tsang, who visited the Hadda region around 630 CE, mentions that a 300-foot high stupa was erected here in the 3rd century BCE by Ashoka.
The photos below were taken by Marek Gawęcki in 1976.
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