Pushkalavati

Stand still for a moment and feel the ground under your shoes. It is not flat. It rises in soft, dusty swells, and the soil is full of small things... broken pottery, flecks of brick, the occasional pale fragment of bone. Around you, the plain of Charsadda opens out in green fields of sugarcane and wheat. Somewhere nearby, a tractor coughs. A dog barks. And beneath all of it lies one of the oldest cities in this part of the world.

This is Pushkalavati. The name comes from Sanskrit, and it is usually translated as the City of Lotuses. Picture the lotus here, a water flower that grows in still ponds and marshes. That image fits the land. Rivers shape this plain. The Swat River comes down from the northern hills and meets the Kabul River not far from here. Water, silt, and fertile ground made this a place where people wanted to stay.

For many centuries, Pushkalavati was a capital of Gandhara. Gandhara was an ancient region that covered much of what is now northwest Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. It sat on the routes between Central Asia, Persia, and the plains of India. Traders, armies, monks, and ideas all passed through it. Before Peshawar grew into the main city of the region, this cluster of mounds was the place that mattered.

Now look for the tallest mound in the area. Locals call it Bala Hisar, which means the high fort. It is not a natural hill. It is a human hill, built up layer by layer as houses were raised, collapsed, and rebuilt on top of the old ones. Every metre of height here is time made solid. When archaeologists cut into it, they found occupation going back many centuries before the Common Era.

Here is a detail most visitors miss. Excavation at this site began early. Sir John Marshall, the British archaeologist who later became famous for his work at Taxila, dug here in 1902 and 1903. In 1958, the archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler returned with a larger team. He traced a defensive ditch and rampart around the old settlement. Much later, a joint team of Pakistani and British archaeologists came back with newer methods, and they argued the earliest layers may be even older than Wheeler thought.

Wheeler's ditch connects to one of the most famous names in ancient history. Greek writers knew this city as Peukelaotis. They recorded that the forces of Alexander the Great reached the region in the fourth century before the Common Era. According to these accounts, one of Alexander's generals fought the local ruler and took the town after a siege. Wheeler suggested that the defences he found might be linked to that siege. It is an attractive idea, but it remains an interpretation, not a certainty.

Now turn your attention to a second, lower mound nearby, called Shaikhan Dheri. This is the surprise of Pushkalavati. The city did not stay in one place. Over time, it moved. At Shaikhan Dheri, the Pakistani archaeologist Ahmad Hasan Dani excavated in the 1960s. He found a later town laid out on a regular grid, with straight streets crossing at right angles. That kind of planning is often linked to Greek influence in this region.

Who brought that influence? After Alexander, Greek kings ruled parts of this region for generations. Historians call them the Indo-Greeks. They minted coins with portraits in the Greek style and inscriptions in more than one script. Coins from many different rulers have been found around Charsadda. Later came other powers, including the Kushans, a dynasty from Central Asia. Each wave left its own traces in the soil beneath you.

This is also Buddhist ground. Gandhara became one of the great centres of Buddhist art. Here, sculptors carved the Buddha in grey schist, a dark layered stone, often with flowing robes that show Greek and Roman influence. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang travelled through Gandhara in the seventh century. He wrote about stupas, which are domed Buddhist monuments, in the area around this city. Many sculptures from the Charsadda region now sit in museums, especially in Peshawar.

There is also a legend attached to the name. According to the Ramayana, the ancient Indian epic, the city was founded by Pushkala, a nephew of the hero Rama. Scholars treat this as tradition rather than history. Still, the story shows how far the fame of this place spread. A city on a dusty plain in the northwest found its way into one of South Asia's best-known stories.

What you see today is quieter than all of this. There are no grand columns standing in rows. There are mounds, cut sections of earth, and fields that press right up against them. In places, you may see the clean vertical faces left by old excavation trenches. Look closely at those faces. The horizontal bands of different-coloured soil are separate periods of life, stacked one above another.

The surroundings matter too. Charsadda is a working Pashtun town, known for its markets, its farms, and its strong local identity. Families still farm the land around the mounds. Children may come over to see who the visitor is. Ask before you photograph people. A greeting goes a long way here, and a local guide can help you find the mounds and explain which parts are open.

The light changes the place completely. In the middle of the day, the plain looks flat and pale. In the late afternoon, the low sun throws long shadows across the mounds. Suddenly the shape of the ancient city becomes easier to read. The edges of the high fort stand out, and the fields turn gold around it.

Before you leave, stand on the highest point you safely can and turn slowly in a full circle. Find the line of trees that marks the rivers. Find the roads leading off toward Peshawar. For thousands of years, people stood near this spot and looked at the same horizon. The pottery under your feet is their pottery. As you walk back toward the road, watch the ground. The city of lotuses is still right there, just below the surface.