Pass by the fallen Buddhas, the catalogued fragments of hands and feet, the everyday remnants of Jinnan Wali Dheri, and you stumble into a wholly different kind of display case. There’s no religious art to be seen here, only three necklaces, two bangles, and a handful of small clasps and pendant elements neatly arrayed on white museum backing behind glass objects that reflect hundreds of years of ornamentation in this now-dusty corner of Punjab, representing an everyday elegance that often gets lost in the archaeological narrative.
A Collection Made for the Body, not the Altar
The Taxila Museum has collected an extraordinary selection of silver and gold adornments, spanning a vast timeline of local, Indian, and Greco-Roman influences. This particular glass-enclosed assortment is predominantly composed of silver with a rich patination of oxidation and presents an array of delicate baubles: ear pendants of various forms, several necklaces, bodices, sashes, belts, and ampersands, necklaces, girdles, ornaments, arm and bangles, pendants, chains of many kinds, torso adornments, chains for wear around the neck and chest, ornaments worn around the waist and hips, arm adornments, pendants worn on necklaces and chains, finger and toe rings, and chains for the wrist and leg. , Brij, 1898, p. Xxiv); rather, while it was still occupied by a ruler based locally at Takhasila, an Indic Ruler.
However, most of those found came from burial, and burial could be far removed and cover many generations-a very important problem: the period for any single given article can seldom be reduced beyond one hundred or one hundred and fifty years and at times cannot even be brought lower, with even better conditions the ranges in a large number of instances do not narrow beyond that period of a “group” of centuries or over three or four. Non-gold, I would suggest many would expect jewellery to be solely out of the costly metals.
The most remarkable items in this cabinet are three necklaces and a pair of wrist bangles– not of dazzling gold but of sombre silver – that have weathered years spent interred within the earth; still, the exquisite craftsmanship remains readily apparent.
Dissecting the Adornments
A standout is the delicate necklace at the centre: comprised of a series of small, bell- or pyramidal-shaped pendants meticulously strung along a beaded cord, it cascades elegantly downward and culminates in a tiered fringe. Each miniature pendant would likely have been individually cast, creating a sense of movement that would catch the light and perhaps emit a faint chime with every turn of the head, as if designed for sonic as well as visual appeal.
On the left lies another necklace of considerable heft. The unusually large beads and the more irregularly shaped pendants suggest a bolder, less refined style, though the individual pendants hint at a form of stylised rendering that often reflects indigenous influences, drawing on flora and fauna, mythology, or symbolic motifs of good fortune or fertility-a hallmark of Gandharan personal adornment.
The right-hand necklace offers evidence of the most skilful metalwork. Articulated, trapezoidal plaques, each adorned with subtle incised designs, are linked together to form a fluid chain that graces the neck like a silver sash. This design, closely mirrored in other gold necklaces from Gandhara, particularly those with inset stones found at sites like Sirkap, shares an intrinsic connection with broader South Asian decorative traditions that celebrated alternating patterns and integrated elements to create cohesive, unified adornments, transcending material differences and superficial stylistic categorisation to indicate a shared cultural heritage, if not actual contact, between far-flung places.
The two C-shaped bangles nestled below the necklaces exhibit a simpler, pragmatic elegance. Open at one end, these bracelets would be eased gently around the wrist and are a ubiquitous form that appeals due to its inherent flexibility, minimising the need for clasps- a testament to universally practical design principles across the ancient world, irrespective of geographical location or culture of origin.
Tiny, rounded, and conical pieces, positioned at the bottom of the display case, were most probably fittings that completed necklaces, belts, or possibly even formed components of earrings – the small but indispensable elements that tie together the larger pieces and which, like buttons or clasps, so frequently survive as archaeological vestiges of wear and tear that bear quiet testimony to long-forgotten rituals and moments of personal expression.
A Side of the Story Often Marginalised
As specialists in the material culture of ancient Taxila, one particularly fascinating aspect of its jewellery collection, we argue, is its power to subvert the overly simplified characterisation of the region as a purely Greco-Roman dominated sphere. The prominent role of Indic cultural elements within the jewellery features readily apparent in the artefacts has consistently been downplayed, marginalised, and relegated to secondary importance in discussions of Taxilan art. What this display case, in particular, emphasises so compellingly is that, in contrast to the colossal Buddhas, with their pronounced Greco-Roman facial characteristics and Roman-influenced draping style, these ornaments tap into a far richer, older tradition of South Asian bodily ornamentation, traditions that flourished and were well-established in this valley long before any Hellenistic explorers set foot on its soil-a significant counterpoint, indeed!
Read more at: https://www.discovernewsdaily24.com/taxila-museum-two-thousand-years-in-a-single-garden/
Each ornament category speaks volume of how extensively our ancestors adorn themselves and walk through this chamber seeing a systematic arrangement starting from your head to your feet, one feels as though one has gotten themselves a direct into the mind, desires and aesthetics of the women and even men for the collection consists of neck, arms and body ornamentation as well of antiquity, who had lived, dressed up and looked adorned in this valley nearly two millenniums ago just like we all do!
Evidence of International Trade in Ornamentation
Even the mere presence of so much gold and silver of this quality in Taxila is an indicator of its thorough immersion within established ancient trade networks. For example, Greco-Roman style pendants featuring worked gold sheet with fine granulations discovered in Sir Kap offer yet another example of the technological transfer of metalworking skills that went along with the broader transmission of Greco-Roman artistic influence. Indeed, as a nexus on the Silk Road corridor, Taxila could not have simply been a conduit for philosophy, or even art styles, but necessarily would also have imported -and subsequently locally adapted – the skills needed to fashion such beautiful ornamentation, sought after perhaps by elite local inhabitants, wealthy merchants, or perhaps even wealthy monasteries that perhaps donated precious artefacts such as this.
A Different Memory of a City Lost
While we are fortunate that the monumental Buddha statues at Taxila were constructed of stone or stucco and therefore more durable, the delicate pieces of jewellery largely survive because they were inadvertently buried in pots, concealed in haste, or even intended from the start to serve as funerary or votive offerings. Buried now in many locations in and around the Taxila valley – the sites of Bhir mound, Sirkap, Sirsukh, Dharmarajikastupa, monasteries near the main sites to the north of the site – it required the slow and arduous labour of archaeologists and labourers for many years, not only for their discovery, but for their eventual preservation through laboratory treatment of artefacts to make them safe for display. This is what gives these delicate artefacts their inherent pathos; a necklace is much less sacred than a huge stupa, but that does not make it less “important” in terms of recovering the human life it represented. Just like with the stone and stucco sculpture of Buddha, the gold work of the jewellery represents the people who made these objects and the people who wear them. So is this precious display of Taxila’s “golden years” representative of what people who lived in Taxila wore?
What struck me walking past this case, having just absorbed the impressive scale and solemnity of Taxila’s stonework and colossal images, was the peculiar intimacy of these small pieces of silver jewellery. Somebody wore them. Somebody is clasping such a string of small, chiming bells around their neck on a routine morning in a city long since faded from the face of the Earth. And now, thanks to decades of painstakingly dusty work, that forgotten history, once just a handful of fragmented memories buried under millennia of earth and time, has been carefully pieced back together and restored for us to see, to contemplate, and to connect with that almost startlingly human pulse that once beat strong within this valley nearly two thousand years ago.
See Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyU4cZor_Gg
