The Indus Valley region in northwestern South Asia, stretching from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea and including parts of modern-day northwestern India, Pakistan, and northeastern Afghanistan, has a long and complex history that has often included rich traditions of bookmaking. 

For the Hidden Stories project, the scrolls and codices that have emerged from the Indus Valley region hold particular interest because they are often written on birch bark. Birches grow in temperate and boreal climates across all continents in the northern hemisphere, and their bark has been a sacred material and favoured writing support for many cultures up into the present day. However, to modern conservators birch bark can present significant conservation challenges and these knowledge-bearing objects globally are often subject to illicit sales or become decontextualized as a result of colonial activity. In October 2022, the Hidden Stories team co-hosted, with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, a two-day international workshop to present and discuss issues related to the treatment, care, rematriation, and understanding of birch bark crafted with the knowledge of peoples across the world. Many of our activities in this research area as well as the Great Lakes and Eastern Woodlands emerge from connections made and discussions held at that event. 

With respect to our research area, “Kashmir and Gandhara”, our work centres around two different time periods, book formats, and cultural contexts. One strand of the project focuses on early Buddhist birch bark scrolls created in ancient Gandhara between the 1st century BCE and 2nd century CE, a collection of which is now housed at the Islamabad Museum, Islamabad, Pakistan. Another strand addresses South Asian birch bark codices of the 15th to 17th centuries CE created in Kashmir and Punjab, and often containing legal or grammatical commentaries. 

You will learn more about our research collaborations in the next two pages. For an additional perspective on the upper Indus region’s historical geography of interconnection and movement, see this ArcGIS StoryMap by Jason Neelis and designed by Isobel Andrews (2023).