Die Felsbildstation Shatial.

• Author: Salomon, Richard
• Position: Reviews of Books

Die Felsbildstation Shatial. By GERARD FUSSMAN and DITTE KONIG, with contributions by OSKAR VON HINUBER, THOMAS O. HOLLMANN, KARL JETTMAR, and NICHOLAS SIMS-WILLIAMS, in cooperation with MARTIN BEMMANN. Materialen zur Archaologie der Nordgebiete Pakistans, vol. 2. Mainz: VERLAG PHILIPP VON ZABERN, 1997. Pp. xxii + 450, plates, map.

It is only after visiting the sites concerned--as this reviewer recently had the opportunity to do--that can one fully appreciate the monumental labors of the scholars who are documenting the rock carvings and inscriptions at the dozens of sites along the upper Indus River and the Karakorum Highway in northern Pakistan, under the auspices of the Research Unit "Felsbilder und Inschriften am Karakorum Highway" of the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. The Shatial site which is the subject of this volume contains some seven hundred figural carvings and eleven hundred inscriptions on nearly two hundred rocks, scattered along a barren stretch of the Indus in the Indus Kohistan District of the Northwest Frontier Province, in a harsh and inhospitable region. The labors involved in documenting and studying these artifacts must have been no less than enormous, all the more so in that many of the carvings and inscriptions are badly worn and difficult to see, let alone interpret. Despite these obstacles, the auth ors and their collaborators have produced a masterfully authoritative and detailed account of every significant record at the site.

Die Felsbildstation Shatial consists of three main parts: a series of descriptive and analytic chapters by the various authors and contributors (pp. 1-116), a comprehensive catalogue of the carvings and inscriptions (pp. 117-356), and 136 plates illustrating all except the most damaged of the records. Additional materials include a bibliography, five indices, and a detailed insert map of the site. At the end of the book an Urdu translation by A. M. Tahir of portions of the introductory material (the "Einleitung" and "Beschreibung des Materials") is provided for the convenience of Pakistani readers. Other than this, the book is entirely in German except for one introductory chapter in French ("Expliquer Shatial") by G. Fussmann (pp. 73-84).

The carvings and inscriptions at Shatial, along with those at other sites along the then newly constructed Karakorum Highway, were discovered in 1979 by Karl Jettmar and A. H. Dani (p. 3). These sites are now being comprehensively documented...