Dukhtar-i Nushirwan (Nigār)

Dokhtar-i-Noshirwan is a rock-cut niche with a fragmented wall painting, located in the Khulm river valley in northern Afghanistan.
The wall painting was dated by Deborah Klimburg-Salter to the early 8th century based on a comparative stylistic analysis with the Buddhist paintings of the Hindu Kush (Klimburg-Salter 1989, Klimburg-Salter 1993, p.355).
What makes this wall painting together with its fragmentary state so diverse, is its eclectic iconography leaving room for many speculations about the identity of the central figure and the interpretation of the surrounding animals and finally the interpretation of the rock-cut niche in its entirety (See Klimburg-Salter 1993; Markus Mode 1992).


Bibliography

Deborah Klimburg-Salter, Dokhtar-i Noshirvan. An Ideology of Kingship, in: Kusumanjali: New Interpretation of Indian Art and Culture, Sh. C. Sivaramamurti Commemoration Volume I, M. S. Nagaraja Rao ed., New Delhi 1987, pp. 61-76.

Deborah Klimburg-Salter, The Kingdom of Bāmiyān. Buddhist art and culture of the Hindu Kush, Naples and Rome 1989.

Deborah Klimburg-Salter, Dokhtar-i-Noshirwan (Nigar) Reconsidered, in: Muqarnas, Vol. 10, Essays in Honor of Oleg Grabar, Leiden 1993, pp. 355-68.

Markus Mode, The Great God of Dokhtar-e Noshirwān, in: East and West 42, 1992, pp. 473-83.

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