Loading…
LiveChecking local weather…“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.” ~ Carl Sagan UANHelplineTourist Helpline +92 51 8911005Request-based planning · human-led
Loading…
Photo: Department of Archaeology & Museums, Government of PakistanField guides / Khyber Pakhtunkhwa / Kashmir Smast
Field guide · Heritage
It is the largest cave monuments in the Mardan District located on the crest of the Paja mountain, towers 2067 m over the Sadam valley to the north-east of Katlang.
Kashmir Smast is a cave-temple of Shiva, cut into the Sakra range about 50 km from Mardan at some 1,135 metres. It is not simply the largest cave monument in the district — the evidence of its own coinage suggests the caves and the valley below them were an independent kingdom for roughly five hundred years.
Why go
A rare series of bronze coins found in and around the caves points to a sovereign polity in Gandhara that held at least partial independence from about the fourth century CE to the ninth. Through the Kidarites, the Alchon Huns, the Nezak, the Turk Shahis and the Hindu Shahis — dynasty after dynasty sweeping across Gandhara — this small kingdom went on minting its own money. Islamic coins of the seventh and eighth centuries have been recovered here too. The finds are overwhelmingly Shaivite and Vaishnavite: Shivalingas, stone sculptures of Ganesh and Vishnu, silver and bronze plaques showing Radha and Krishna, and gold ornaments set with jewels.
A major Hindu pilgrimage centre of the Gandharan period, and one of the very few places in Pakistan where an independent local kingdom can be traced almost entirely through its own coins.
Its name rests on a popular legend that one of the tunnels within eventually leads to Kashmir.
A cave big enough to have been a temple, on a mountain crest, that was once the centre of a kingdom nobody has heard of.
Planning tip
Best Time to Visit, October to March. Summer on the Peshawar plain is severe, and most of these sites have no shade.
Getting there, Mardan district, north-east of Peshawar. Shahbazgarhi, Ranigat and Sahri Bahlol lie within an hour of one another; Kashmir Smast is a mountain approach from Katlang.
Allow, An hour at the accessible sites; a half day for Ranigat including the climb.
Straight-line distance from Kashmir Smast, within 30 km.
