Gandhara Art from Bamiyan to Peshawar:
A Heritage We Cannot Afford to Lose
Name of Author: Dr. Tom Corcoran
Email: tom.corcoran@fadingcultures.org / info@fadingcultures.org
Title of the Paper: Oil, Pigment, and Pilgrimage:
The Colours of the Buddha and the Spread of Artistic Knowledge across Central and South Asia Conference
Sub-theme: Buddhism in Gandhara and Its Transmission Beyond
Oil, Pigment, and Pilgrimage: The Colours of the Buddha and the Spread of Artistic Knowledge across Central and South Asia
In the high mountain basin of Bamiyan, where winter winds carve their voice into the cliffs and snow settles in long shadows on the valley floor, two colossal Buddhas once gazed over one of the great crossroads of Asia. Their surfaces, now scarred by destruction, were once alive with colour produced in monastic art studios that served as centres of devotion and scientific experimentation. In 2008, microscopic analysis of pigment flakes recovered from the site revealed something that overturned long-standing Western assumptions about the history of painting. These fragments contained true drying oils, including walnut, poppy seed, and perilla, along with metallic dryers that accelerated polymerisation and thin-layered glazes that resemble later European techniques (Taniguchi 2007; Watanabe et al. 2010; Lluveras-Tenorio et al. 2017).
This evidence confirms that oil painting was being practised in the Buddhist world of seventh-century Afghanistan, centuries before its documented use in fifteenth-century Europe. The murals at Bamiyan show not only spiritual intent but an advanced command of materials, plant chemistry, and pigment behaviour. They demonstrate that Buddhist artists were innovators who manipulated minerals, oils, and resins with remarkable confidence.
This paper explores how such knowledge emerged in Bamiyan and how it travelled along the Silk Roads into the Gandharan valleys, across the passes of the Hindu Kush, and into the tribal frontiers of present-day Pakistan. It examines the shared technological world in which plant oils, resins, ochres, and the very vocabulary of craft travelled alongside silk, lapis, and cinnabar. It traces how these materials and methods were adapted into textile decoration traditions such as Afridi lac cloth and the freehand Rogan painting of Peshawar. Today, Pakistan’s last remaining Rogan painter, Fayyaz Ahmad, preserves a fragile lineage that reflects a much older technological culture shaped by long-distance trade and monastic networks.
This research does not argue for a direct and unbroken line between the Buddhist muralists of Bamiyan and modern Rogan artisans. Instead, it shows that these traditions emerged within the same broader sphere of oil-based experimentation across Central and South Asia. Rogan painting in Pakistan, particularly its delicate freehand form, represents one of the surviving members of this wider family of oil-based crafts that once extended from the Buddhist studios of Bamiyan to the craft workshops of the Khyber Pass. The present study situates this craft within that wider history of material experimentation and exchange.
The Seventh Century Silk Roads: A World of Movement, Exchange, and Material Flow
The seventh century was a time of movement across Central and South Asia. It was not peaceful. Caravans travelled under systems of taxation, negotiated tolls, armed escorts, and tribal levies that shaped every stage of the journey (Hansen 2012; Frankopan 2015). The routes across the Hindu Kush were dangerous and unpredictable. Yet, they brought together the commercial and cultural worlds of China, the Iranian plateau, the Indian subcontinent, and the Buddhist regions of Afghanistan. These roads connected monastic centres, seasonal markets, and frontier settlements, allowing pigments, plant oils, resins, and workshop knowledge to circulate far beyond their places of origin (Elisseeff 2000; Anderson 2009).
Several linguistic and cultural spheres overlapped along these routes. Bactrian, Sogdian, Sanskrit, Middle Persian, early Pashto, and forms of Gandhari Prakrit were spoken in different valleys. Craft vocabulary moved across these languages. The term Rogan, from the Persian “rowghan,” meaning oil, circulated widely through trade and artisanal networks, reflecting the shared knowledge of oil manipulation used in both culinary and craft contexts.
The seventh-century Silk Roads were shaped by empire but sustained by artisans. Plant oils could be extracted from flaxseed, walnut, or local seeds. Ochres and carbon blacks were widely available. More valuable pigments travelled great distances. Cinnabar came from China. Malachite and green earth came from Central Asia. Lapis lazuli came from the mines of Badakhshan. The movement of these minerals along the Bamiyan–Kapisa–Swat–Peshawar corridor demonstrates the shared material environment in which Buddhist muralists and frontier textile decorators operated (Bell 2010; Tite et al. 2018; Warner 2011).
Oil painting in Bamiyan did not emerge in isolation. It developed in a world where knowledge, pigments, and craftsmen travelled continuously.
Bamiyan as a Monastic Art Studio: Innovation and Devotion
The Bamiyan valley hosted some of the most important Buddhist monastic centres of its time. These were not informal cave shelters but structured complexes with dedicated art studios where monks and artisans prepared pigments, tested materials, and painted murals for ritual, narrative, and devotional purposes (Higuchi and Barnes 1995; Morgan 2012). The scientific analyses carried out by Taniguchi and colleagues showed that these painters used true drying oils, mixed with mineral pigments in thin, translucent layers. Metallic compounds such as lead salts were intentionally added to accelerate the drying process (Taniguchi 2007; Watanabe et al. 2010).
The palette was equally advanced. Natural ultramarine derived from lapis lazuli produced deep blues. Cinnabar created vibrant red. Yellow and red ochres came from nearby deposits. Malachite produced green. Carbon black and bone black offered rich tonal depth (Lluveras-Tenorio et al. 2017; Momi et al. 2004). These pigments were applied with deliberate layering techniques that intensified luminosity.
The presence of ultramarine is particularly significant. Studies by Gettens, Momi, the Munich conservation group, and the NRICPT–University of Tsukuba team identified natural ultramarine derived from lapis lazuli across several mural cycles (Gettens 1962; Momi et al. 2004; Yamauchi, Taniguchi, and Uno 2007). Radiocarbon dating places much of this work between the fifth and late eighth centuries, with several major ensembles belonging to the mid-seventh century. Bamiyan is not the earliest global use of lapis, but it is one of the most securely documented and technically sophisticated uses of ultramarine in Central Asian Buddhist art.
In Buddhist visual culture across Central and South Asia, colour carried recognised symbolic associations. Blues were often linked to transcendence and spiritual depth, reds to vitality and sacred power, and gold to enlightenment and the radiance of awakened qualities (Fisher 1993; Huntington 2014; Chandra 1987). The use of drying oils at Bamiyan intensified the luminosity of these pigments, allowing muralists to create surfaces that communicated both doctrinal meaning and refined material technique.
Bamiyan’s importance lies not only in the beauty of its lost murals but in the technical evidence preserved in their remains. This was a place where religious imagination and material innovation met.
Gandhara, spanning parts of present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, was a major centre of artistic, monastic, and commercial life for many centuries. Its visual culture drew on Greek, Persian, Central Asian, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions, producing hybrid forms in sculpture, architecture, painting, and textiles (Behrendt 2007; Huntington 2015). Chinese pilgrims such as Xuanzang described monasteries filled with murals, banners, and embroidered cloths, supported by well-organised workshops that produced textiles for both ritual and daily use (Wriggins 2020).
Archaeology has long recognised the close material and stylistic relationships linking Bamiyan and Gandhara. Rowland noted that Bamiyan’s drapery and iconography reflect Gandharan prototypes, while Rosenfield showed that the Kushan Empire created a unified cultural zone connecting Taxila, Swat, Kapisa, Bamiyan, and Bactria (Rosenfield 1967). This network facilitated the movement of artists, pigments, tools, and techniques. Conservation science has confirmed that Bamiyan’s pigment palette and binder systems overlap with those found at Gandharan and post-Gandharan sites such as Mes Aynak, Shotorak, and Taxila (Taniguchi 2007; Elisseeff 2000).
It is important to recognise that Gandhara was not a monolithic artistic tradition, but a region characterised by distinct workshop ecologies.
• Swat valley mural traditions at Butkara and Saidu Sharif, documented through the Italian Archaeological Mission (Tucci 1958; Faccenna 1980), demonstrate a sophisticated and locally inflected wall-painting practice.
• Taxila’s workshop culture, described by Marshall (1951), reveals a rich tradition of sculptural production, plaster technology, and material exchange.
• Kapisa–Bamiyan connections, outlined by Klimburg-Salter (1989), show that northern Gandhara extended naturally into the Bamiyan cultural zone, creating a continuum of monastic and artistic influence across the Hindu Kush.
The movement of technical knowledge across this region occurred through several channels:
• monastic networks, linking Buddhist centres from Kapisa and Bamiyan to Taxila and Swat (Willis 2000; Salomon 1999)
• itinerant artisans, moving seasonally with caravans and royal patronage (Rienjang and Stewart 2018)
• material trade routes, particularly lapis lazuli, cinnabar, resins, textiles, and plant oils (Tite et al. 2018; Herrmann 1968; Liu 2010; Eastaugh et al. 2004)
UNESCO’s Bamiyan Cultural Landscape dossier describes Bamiyan as “a major node on the trade and artistic networks that connected Gandhara with Bactria and the Tarim Basin.” This situates Bamiyan firmly within a transregional artistic ecosystem. In this system, Gandhara functioned as the hinge, allowing the technical knowledge present in Bamiyan’s monastic workshops to flow southward into the frontier societies of the Khyber.
The Khyber Pass: Movement, Frontier Life, and Craft Exchange
The Khyber Pass has long served as the most significant crossing between Central and South Asia. It connected Bamiyan, Kapisa, and Swat with the plains of Peshawar. Tribes along this route controlled movement, levied taxes, and participated actively in trade (Caroe 1958; Holdich 1899). The Afridi, one of the major tribes of the region, have lived in the Khyber area for centuries, possibly connected with the group described by Herodotus as the Aparytai, although evidence remains inconclusive (Kuczkiewicz-Fras 2016).
Oil-based textile decoration became a defining feature of Afridi craft. Families produced lac cloth using thickened plant oils mixed with pigments and applied with brass stamps. The cloth was valued for weddings, dowries, and ceremonial occasions. Its red and black motifs carried symbolic meaning, expressing lineage and identity (Ghosh 1989; Starr 1920; Yacopino 1977).
The materials required for lac cloth reflect the shared technological world of the Silk Roads. Oils could be locally extracted. Ochres were available nearby. Cinnabar and malachite were imported. Itinerant metalworkers produced brass stamps. Heating oil to create a workable paste mirrors the early stages of Rogan paint preparation. These crafts developed in an environment shaped by long-distance caravan exchange.
Knowledge did not remain fixed. Monk artisans, merchants, and tribal painters encountered one another through repeated contact. Pigments, tools, and techniques moved with them.
Afridi Lac Cloth: Material Culture and Social Meaning
Afridi lac cloth was far more than decoration. It served as a form of social expression and as a means of storing wealth in the highland villages of the Khyber region. Families kept pieces of lac cloth in household chests and brought them out for marriage arrangements, lineage gatherings, and ceremonial obligations. Ethnographers working in the frontier noted that textiles often circulated through marriage alliances and acted as durable markers of household identity, a pattern recorded throughout the tribal zone by authors such as Starr, Caroe, and Wylly (Starr 1920; Caroe 1958; Wylly 1912). Motifs helped identify clan and locality, and some designs appear to have been associated with particular households or used as gifts that affirmed ties between families (Ghosh 1989; Yacopino 1977).
The production method reflected a sophisticated practical knowledge of oils and heat. Plant oils were heated slowly until they thickened into a paste suitable for stamping, a technique described in regional craft histories and in interviews with twentieth-century Afridi and Waziri artisans (Riazuddin 1988; Yacopino 1977). Pigments such as red ochre, lampblack, and sometimes imported vermilion were mixed into the warm paste. Brass stamps, often produced by itinerant metalworkers who travelled between villages, were heated and pressed into the mixture before being applied to the cloth with controlled pressure. Once dried, the stamped surface formed a durable, water-resistant layer that could withstand abrasion and exposure to sunlight (Ghosh 1989).
This method required a practised hand and an understanding of the behaviour of heated oils, pigment density, and drying properties, skills that reflect broader technological traditions present along the frontier. The Afridi lived in a landscape shaped by caravan movement and long-distance exchange through the Khyber. Textile goods, pigments, metal tools, and craft vocabulary circulated through these routes, and lac cloth formed part of this broader frontier economy (Holdich 1899; Kuczkiewicz Fras 2016). Designs often reflect angular geometric motifs common across the region, which communicated identity in a social environment where lineage and honour shaped community life.
Afridi lac cloth forms one branch of a wider regional family of oil-based crafts. The controlled heating of plant oils, mixing of mineral pigments, and careful handling of thickened media find clear parallels in Rogan painting and other frontier textile practices. Although these traditions evolved independently, they reflect a shared technological world shaped by long-term exposure to the same pigments, oils, tools, and trade networks that linked Bamiyan, Gandhara, and the Khyber region (Elisseeff 2000; Hansen 2012). This makes Afridi lac cloth one of the strongest surviving examples of how oil-based artistic knowledge continued to develop in textile form after the decline of large-scale Buddhist mural painting.
Peshawar: A Frontier City of Crafts, Stories, and Oil-Based Traditions
Peshawar is among the oldest living cities of South Asia, with roots in the early historic period and a long association with the Gandharan region. Known in antiquity as Purushapura, it rose to prominence under the Kushans in the first and second centuries CE. Archaeological work at sites such as Shahji-ki-Dheri, where the remains of the great Kanishka Stupa were identified, together with finds from Bala Hissar and Gorkhatri, shows that the city developed into an important urban and religious centre.
For centuries, Peshawar’s walled city functioned as a major passageway between Central Asia and the Indian plains. Caravans entered through gates such as Kabuli Darwaza, Kohati Gate, and Lahori Gate, bringing textiles, pigments, metals, and household goods into the city’s markets. Qissa Khwani Bazaar, known as the Bazaar of Storytellers, became a gathering place for travellers, traders, and poets. The surrounding lanes supported specialised crafts, including block printing, painted cloth, metalwork, and other decorative traditions noted in historical accounts (Caroe 1958; Yacopino 1977).
Within this setting, oil-based textile decoration took hold. According to the Ahmad family’s oral history, Rogan painting has been practised in Peshawar for several generations. Although written documentation is limited, as is often the case with hereditary crafts, the technique's persistence within the walled city suggests it adapted well to the region’s established artisanal environment.
Rogan in Peshawar is produced freehand. The artist places the cloth on the lap and draws with a stylus dipped into a warm, thickened oil medium. The patterns are created from memory, with slow, steady movements. When I first met Fayyaz Ahmad, he worked in a small shop near the old city. During quiet moments, he unfolded silk and began to paint. The lines appeared with a calm certainty that reflected years of learned practice. He was taught by his father, who learned the same method from his own father.
The Rogan tradition in Gujarat has received UNESCO recognition and is widely publicised. The practice in Peshawar, although far less known, sits within an older frontier craft world shaped by long-running textile and pigment preparation. Today, Fayyaz Ahmad is the last known practitioner of freehand Rogan silk painting in Pakistan. His work represents the final link to a craft that once held a place in the wider urban life of the walled city.
Rogan Art and the hands of Master Craftsman Fayyaz Ahmad, Peshawar, Pakistan.
Material Comparisons: Bamiyan, Afridi Lac Cloth, and Peshawar Rogan
Material comparisons reveal clear parallels between Bamiyan murals, Afridi lac cloth, and Rogan painting. All three involve:
• heating plant oils
• mixing oils with mineral pigments
• adjusting viscosity with additives
• applying the mixture to a surface with precision
• knowledge of drying times and handling properties
Bamiyan murals used plant oils as binders mixed into glazes. Afridi lac cloth used warmed oils thickened to a paste and stamped. Rogan painting uses heated, stringy oil paint, drawn freehand. Each craft required intimate knowledge of oil behaviour.
Pigment use also overlaps across these media, particularly in the reliance on mineral colours and carbon-based blacks. Although Rogan textile artists did not use ultramarine, the movement of Badakhshan lapis along the Bamiyan–Peshawar corridor demonstrates the region's shared mineral economy (Bell 2010; Tite et al. 2018). The same routes that carried ultramarine into Buddhist studios also carried plant oils, brass tools, ochres, and the craft vocabulary of oil-based decoration.
These parallels do not confirm direct descent, but they show that Bamiyan, Gandhara, the Khyber frontier, and Peshawar operated within a broadly similar technological context shaped by trade, movement, and cultural interchange.
Lapis Lazuli, Ultramarine, and Shared Material Networks
The story of ultramarine begins long before its appearance in the murals of Bamiyan. Lapis lazuli from the Badakhshan mines of Afghanistan, among the world’s oldest continuously exploited mineral sources, was being traded as early as the third millennium BCE, reaching Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and Egypt (Herrmann 1968; Moorey 1994). By the first millennium BCE, Badakhshan lapis had become a prestige commodity circulating across Persia, Central Asia, and the early kingdoms of northern India. Buddhist monks, merchants, artisans, and caravans later followed these same routes.
Technical analyses of the Bamiyan fragments confirm that natural ultramarine derived from Badakhshan lapis was applied over carbon-black underlayers to intensify luminosity (Gettens 1962; Momi et al. 2004; Lluveras-Tenorio et al. 2017).
Archaeometric studies trace the mineral’s geological signature along the Bamiyan–Kapisa–Swat–Peshawar–Taxila corridor, revealing a pigment economy deeply embedded in Silk Road commerce (Tite et al. 2018). These routes also carried cinnabar from China, malachite from Central Asia, and plant-based oils from the subcontinent, producing a shared workshop vocabulary that linked muralists, manuscript painters, textile decorators, and frontier artisans.
Rogan painting in Pakistan forms part of this broader material world. Historical Rogan from the frontier region did make use of blue tones, though not always from natural ultramarine. Oral histories and surviving late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century samples suggest that blues were produced from mixtures of locally available minerals, indigo, and, later, imported synthetic pigments. In recent decades, inexpensive synthetic ultramarine and phthalocyanine blues from China have replaced earlier materials, mirroring patterns seen across South Asian craft traditions. This shift does not diminish the medium's historical continuity; rather, it reflects the same adaptive logic that governed pigment use along the Silk Roads, where artisans routinely substituted materials based on cost, availability, and trade conditions.
Thus, the presence of blue in Pakistani Rogan does not indicate a direct inheritance from Bamiyan’s lapis-based ultramarine. Instead, both traditions draw upon long-distance mineral trade, oil manipulation, and surface decoration, forming an interconnected craft ecology across Central and South Asia.
Reframing Art History
For centuries, Western art history has repeated the idea that oil painting originated in Europe in the fifteenth century. Renaissance biographers such as Vasari shaped this narrative, and it persisted even as technical evidence accumulated to contradict it. Modern conservation science has shown that plant-based oils, metallic dryers, and multilayered glazes were used in Asia long before their documented use in the European Renaissance (Brommelle, Smith, and Thompson 1987; Elkins 2004; Jett, Hammond, and Druick 2005). The discoveries at Bamiyan sit within this broader reassessment. They confirm that oil-based techniques were being used in the Buddhist world of Central Asia centuries before Van Eyck (Taniguchi 2007; Watanabe et al. 2010; Lluveras Tenorio et al. 2017).
This does not diminish the innovations of European artists, who refined oil painting into a distinct tradition that served the needs of Christian iconography and naturalistic representation. Rather, it expands the historical frame. Early European oil painting becomes one branch of a much older global story of material experimentation and exchange (O’Neill 2009; Berrie 2015). The use of plant oils, resins, mineral pigments, and drying agents can now be seen as part of a shared technological environment stretching from the monasteries of Bamiyan to the craft workshops of South and Central Asia.
Pakistan sits within this wider history. The survival of oil-based textile traditions such as Afridi lac cloth and the freehand Rogan painting of Peshawar shows that oil manipulation remained an active craft practice in the region long after the decline of Buddhist mural production. These traditions developed within the same interconnected network that linked Gandhara, Bamiyan, the passes of the Hindu Kush, and the markets of Peshawar (Rosenfield 1967; Taddei 1993; Winter 2000; Zin 2018). They are not peripheral or marginal survivals but reminders of a shared technological past.
Recognising this history requires reframing Pakistan not as an outlier but as a central contributor to the evolution of oil-based arts. Its living traditions form important evidence for an older, more global origin story that has only recently begun to be understood.
Preservation and the Future of Rogan Art in Pakistan
Rogan art in Pakistan now stands at a critical threshold. The knowledge survives in only one family, represented today by Fayyaz Ahmad, whose practice preserves a rare freehand tradition that differs in technique and lineage from the block-and-freehand Rogan style recognised by UNESCO in India. While India’s Rogan art of Nirona was inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2014, the Pakistani strand remains undocumented, unsupported, and largely unknown beyond local circles. This disparity reflects a wider regional pattern in which parallel or related traditions receive uneven safeguarding attention.
The Pakistani form is significant not simply as craftsmanship but as part of a much older technological world of oil-based artistic knowledge that once stretched from Bamiyan’s monastic workshops to the frontier craft communities of the Hindu Kush. Its survival provides the last living demonstration of a wider family of techniques involving heated plant oils, mineral pigments, and freehand surface decoration. The loss of this tradition would therefore erase more than a craft: it would sever one of the final links to the historic material cultures that shaped artistic expression across Central and South Asia.
Safeguarding Rogan in Pakistan requires coordinated action:
• formal apprenticeships, ensuring transmission to a new generation;
• technical documentation, including materials, recipes, and stylistic repertoires;
• state recognition, through national heritage registers or provincial heritage schemes;
• regional collaboration, drawing on precedents set by UNESCO’s recognition of Rogan in India while asserting Pakistan’s distinct artistic lineage.
Pakistan has the opportunity to champion this unique form of Rogan as part of its intangible cultural heritage, aligning with the principles of the 2003 UNESCO Convention. Without intervention, the extinction of this tradition would leave a significant gap in the historical understanding of oil-based art in the region and silence a craft that has endured on the frontier for centuries.
Conclusion
The evidence gathered across Bamiyan, Gandhara, the Khyber frontier, and contemporary Peshawar points to a fundamental reassessment of where the global history of oil painting truly begins. This study demonstrates that the manipulation of drying oils, metallic driers, and mineral pigments formed a shared technological culture across Central and South Asia long before the arrival of comparable methods in Europe. The Bamiyan murals do not stand alone as an anomaly in Buddhist art. Their chemistry, pigments, and workshop discipline align with wider craft traditions that continued southward in forms such as Afridi lac cloth and survive today, against the odds, in the Rogan painting of Peshawar.
The research addresses a long-standing gap in art history: mural traditions have been studied apart from textile traditions, and monastic artistic innovation has rarely been connected to vernacular frontier crafts. By bringing conservation science, Silk Roads material studies, historical linguistics, and contemporary ethnography into one analytical frame, this work shows that these practices were not isolated developments but expressions of a connected technological world in which oils, pigments, and artisans travelled as readily as ideas and pilgrim stories.
This broader perspective reframes Pakistan’s position in global art history. It reveals the region not as a recipient of external influence but as one of the formative zones in the evolution of oil-based artistic technologies. The survival of Rogan painting in Peshawar, preserved in a single family, is therefore more than the survival of a craft. It is the survival of a working memory of a world that linked Buddhist monastic studios, Kushan trade corridors, Afridi frontier artisans, and the visual languages of Central and South Asia.
The implications for heritage policy are profound. Safeguarding this art is not an act of nostalgia. It is an act of historical responsibility.
Methodology (Brief Overview)
This study combines conservation science, art-historical comparison, and extended ethnographic fieldwork in Afghanistan and Pakistan to examine how oil-based artistic knowledge circulated across Central and South Asia. The aim is not to establish a direct lineage between Bamiyan muralists and modern Rogan artisans but to identify the wider technological environment in which these traditions developed.
Conservation Science Review
The analysis draws on published laboratory studies of Bamiyan mural fragments, including GC/MS identification of drying oils, pigment stratigraphy, and binder chemistry (Taniguchi; Watanabe; Lluveras-Tenorio). Only peer-reviewed and reproducible results were used. No new laboratory sampling was conducted.
Art-Historical and Archaeological Comparison
Comparisons were made across securely dated Gandharan, Kushan, and Central Asian Buddhist sites. This includes stylistic parallels, pigment availability, workshop structures, and mineral trade routes such as the Badakhshan lapis economy. These comparisons establish shared material conditions rather than direct genealogical descent.
Ethnographic Fieldwork (2016–2024)
Field research included multiple visits to Bamiyan from 2016 to 2019, followed by extended work in Peshawar, the Khyber region, and surrounding frontier communities between 2019 and 2024. Methods included interviews with artisans, observation of workshop practice, and documentation of craft vocabulary in Pashto, Dari, and Urdu. Particular attention was given to techniques used in Afridi lac cloth and the freehand Rogan painting of Peshawar, recorded through repeated engagement with the Ahmad family and other local practitioners.
Linguistic and Terminological Review
The study analyses the distribution of the term Rogan/rowghan (“oil”) across Persianate, Pashto, and frontier craft vocabularies to understand how technical language travelled alongside materials and trade networks. Linguistic data support the existence of shared technological environments rather than linear descent.
Evidence Classification
To maintain clarity and avoid overstated connections, evidence is categorised as:
• Strong: laboratory analyses, pigment sourcing, dated murals, documented trade routes.
• Plausible: workshop descriptions, stylistic and technical parallels, ethnographic observations.
• Indeterminate: pre-modern craft genealogies and claims of direct transmission.
This framework supports the conclusion that Bamiyan, Afridi lac cloth, and Rogan painting developed within a broad, long-term sphere of oil-based experimentation across Central and South Asia.
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