Type: Archaeological Site - Temple
Province: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
District: Haripur
Period: Historic
Relative Chronology: 2nd- 1st Century BCE
Description: This site is located hardly ½ km from the site of Sirkap, near Jandial Village on Jandial Temple Road and 2 ½ km from Taxila Museum off Taxila-Khanpur Road. The temple of Jandial is considered to be one of the most interesting monuments unearthed at Taxila occupying a commanding position on an artificial mound about little more than ½ km north of the north gateway of the Sirkap city. Its length, including the projection in front of its portico, is 48m, and, excluding the peristyle, a little over 30 m; its width is 26 m. Its plan strikingly resembles the classical temples of Greece. Marshall has compared this temple with those in Greece and has concluded that plan of the temple at Jandial is almost identically the same. According to him, in place of the usual peristyle of columns, there is a wall pierced at frequent intervals by large windows which admitted ample light to the interior, but at the front entrance to the temple are two ionic columns in antis, i.e. between pilasters which supported the ends of the architraves passing above them. Corresponding to them on the inner side of a spacious vestibule is another pair of similar columns in antis. Then comes, just as in Greek temples, the pronaos leading through a wide doorway to the naos, while at the back of the temple is another chamber corresponding to the opisthodomos. The only essential difference marked by Marshall is in plan between this and a Greek temple. Instead of an extra chamber between the opisthodomos and naos, we have at Jandial, a solid mass of masonry, the foundations of which are carried down over 6 m below the temple floor. From the great depth of these foundations, it may safely be inferred that this mass of masonry was intended to carry a heavy superstructure, which apparently rose in the form of a tower considerably higher than the rest of the building. Access to this tower was provided by flights of broad steps ascending from the opisthodomos at the rear of the temple and laid parallel with the sides of the edifice. Two of these flights still exist, and it may be assumed that there were at least three more flights above them, narrowing in width as they ascended above the roof of the naos. The altitude of this tower may be surmised to have been about 12 m. At the back of the temple there were no free-standing columns, but only rectangular and semicircular pilasters built of the same limestone masonry as the adjoining walls and crowned perhaps, though this is not certain, with sandstone capital. The innser walls of the temple stand to an aveage height of btween and 2 ¾ m and 3 m and are built of ‘coursed rubble’ masonry carried on massive foundations. The masonry for the most part is limestone, but the mouldings at the base of the walls and the cornices are of kanjur. The mouldings in question run completely round the outside of both the outer and the inner walls and round the inteior of the naos.
The Ionic columns and pilasters are composed of massive blocks of sandstone of grey colour. There is a doorway leading from the pronaos to the naos. According to Marshall, the date of the Jandial temple is still open to question. The strikingly Greek character of its plan and the design of its Ionic pillars suggest that it was erected under the rule of the Bactrian Greek kings who build and occupied the Sirkap city during the second century B.C.
Similarly it is also debatable as to what faith this unique temple was dedicated (?). This is certainly not a Buddhist shrine because of the total absence of any Buddhist images or other characteristic relics among the ruins, as well as from its unusual plan, which is unlike that of any Buddhist monument known to us. On the other hand, the solid tower that once stood in the middle of the building behind the naos is significant. Marshall opines that this tower was in the nature of a zikurrat, tapering like a pyramid and ascended in the same way as the zikurrats of Mesopotamia. He concludes from its presence, as well as from the entire absence of images, that the temple was probably Zoroastrian. He finally opines that the date of the Jandial temple is approximately of the same age as the walls of Sirkap, and that it appertains, therefore, to the Greek period.
Latitude: 33.775716667
Longitude: 72.833500000
Ownership: Federal Government
Legal Status: Protected by The Antiquity Act 1975 (As amended in 1992)
Title of Publication: Archaeological Survey in Hazara Division, District Abbottabad (Campaign 2008-09)
Published In: Frontier Archaeology, Vol VI
Year of Publication: 2016
Bibliography/Reference: Khan, Saleh Muhammad et.al
