| Our readers often ask just ‘which is the oldest inhabited place in the ancient city of Lahore?’ The answer is complex, for over time different places were inhabited, surely each connected and related.
So let us use scientifically verified places and try to build an accurate picture, incomplete as it always will remain. Four events have been selected, firstly is the archaeological findings from inside the Lahore Fort, then there is the road outside, and then comes the river port and gateway that served it, and, finally, the place where Buddha allegedly stayed.
In 1959, the British Archaeological Expedition and the Pakistan’s Department of Archaeology carried out an excavation in the Lahore Fort’s ‘Dewan-e-Aam’ by digging a 180 feet by 60 feet pit and went down to a 50 feet depth. They covered 20 feet cultural layers till they reached virgin soil. As they reached virgin soil the oldest was a mud walls with fragments of pottery.
Carbon-dating showed the pottery as being approximately 4,500 years old. Being that the digging pit was the highest mound in the surrounding area, it was assumed that when floods hit the area, including the Harappa, this is where people sought refuge. This can safely be said to Lahore’s starting point.
But then we have to examine two nearby related sites. The Khizri Gateway and Lahore’s river port with the Ravi flowing outside. Just beyond are the oldest markets, and where at the port river boats were built. Even today if you walk through the lanes and streets and ‘mohallahs’ of Khziri Gate, since renamed by Maharajah Ranjit Singh as Sheranwala for he tied live lions outside after his Multan conquest, you will find the names depicting oar and sails and other boat connected names. Of recent piety has been introduced to the names, a tragic development in my books.
Much later during Akbar’s era, his wife Maryam Zamani started building large ships for Haj purposes, and soon also to counter growing threats from European warships. In historic terms, it was a move a century late. It was from Lahore and its markets that goods flowed towards Multan and beyond towards Kolachi (modern Karachi) and towards the Middle East and beyond. A few years ago, archaeologists found a camel buried in the barren parts of Spain with products from Lahore.
But the road outside was the source of supply for the goods that supplied the ships and markets of ancient Lahore. Today we know this road, call it is the highway called GT Road. This is a road about which very little is written about, so it is about time we mention its very ancient history. GT Road stands for Grand Trunk Road, a very recent British renaming of an ancient highway.
Its original name was Uttarapatha, built in ancient times and rebuilt by Chandra Gupta Maurya. In a sense the existing GT Road is the world’s oldest highway, one that has been rebuilt time and again and renamed every time. The name has Prakrit origins, though once Sanskrit emerged the same name was used. In the 6th century BC, the very first large cities, or marketplaces, had started to emerge in India. Lahore is clearly mentioned in the Atharvaveda, as also in the later Indian epics.
Later on, it was known by other names like Badshahi Sarak and the British widened it for military used and renamed it Grand Trunk Road, or the road that feeds other roads. The road is approximately 2,400 kilometres long and starts from the Bangladesh-Myanmar border running right across the sub-continent across the Khyber Pass to Kabul.
We see mention of this ancient highway in Buddhist literature much before the Mauryan era who called it Uttarapatha, meaning the ‘northern highway’. In the Asoka era, this highway had trees planted all along and water wells dug at ever half ‘kos’ with nearby edicts to describe his greatness. Rest houses for travellers had wells nearby.
In the era of Sher Shah Suri, this highway was widened and more trees added as well as ‘sarais’ built. It was again renamed Badshahi Sarak. At the start of the British era in Bengal in the 1830s this most ancient of highways for the first time was metalled and again renamed the Grand Trunk Road. The plan was to build a metalled road from Calcutta to Kabul. Once Punjab was captured this plan was fulfilled. Sadly, a wise ruler like Maharajah Ranjit Singh was opposed to building such a highway.
Back to Lahore’s old city we have two tentative findings, both in Mohallah Maullian inside Lohari Gate. The first finding was old fragments of pottery found under a dug-up old house where today stands an ugly concrete plaza. Tests in Cambridge University dated them at 3,250 years old, and being inside Lohari Gate it makes sense. Nearby is a house where Buddha allegedly stayed for three months.
So here we have four sites that are in a way timeless. The Lahore Fort dig provides the oldest proof of the age of Lahore, which also is proof of the Harappa floods and of people shifting to higher mounds. Many more archaeological diggings are needed to make greater sense of this ancient city.
Then we have the Khziri Gateway and how the boats and ships from there sailed to faraway places. The emergence of sailing gunboats came about a bit too late, for by then the European colonialists had effectively taken over. But the Ravi provided the lifeline for the city, which has continued to grow in size. This is not a positive attribute and now adds to the city becoming unmanageable. The Holy Prophet’s (pbuh) ‘hadith’ of not allowing cities to grow too large is ignored.
So the next time when any of our readers stand on GT Road, they should pause a few minutes and think of the great men, rulers, sages and saints who have walked this oldest and greatest of highways. Maybe there are lessons to be learnt yet.
Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2023 |
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