Images of Guldara Stupa: Politics and Portrayal of Buddhist Aesthetics in Afghanistan

With its drum wrapped in Indian-styled blinded arches, its square base raised high and lined with Indo-Corinthian pilasters, the Guldara stupa atop the snowy sandstone hill outside Kabul, Afghanistan, embodies the perfect pictorial ideal of Eurasian influences in Buddhist architectural aesthetics. And when the famous Bamiyan Buddha was destroyed, the still-remaining Guldara stupa gains further popularity, as it now is the primary icon of Afghanistan’s multi-religious background.

Hardly known to the general public is that, when the Guldara stupa was first introduced outside its locality in the 1830s, no one appreciated its architectural appearance. Charles Masson (1800-1853) ventured to the Villege of Gol Darrah and encountered this daunting Kushan-dynasty structure. Yet Masson’s short description of what he called the “first-class topes” did not capture British interest as much as the gold ornaments he took out of its vault, and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century architectural historians remained strangely ignorant of the architecture. The rise of this architectural icon is therefore a recent product of modern politics, invigorated by changes in the Muslim world as much as those in Asian architectural discourse. 

This paper traces the portrayal of the Guldara stupa from the nineteenth century to present, examining the ways in which it has been represented by colonial British explorers, Japanese archaeologists, American historians, and Afghan architectural historians. Each representation reflects a particularity of place and time in each stage of Afghanistan history as well as that of the history of Buddhist architecture. Incorporating primary materials from different archaeological surveys of Kabul and nearby provinces with published reports about Buddhist monuments in Afghanistan and Central Asia, this paper places the second-century Guldara stupa at the crossroad of historical studies and Buddhist architectural historiography of the past hundred and sixty years.