Jandial

Jandial near the city of Taxila in Pakistan is the site of an ancient temple well known for its Ionic columns. The temple is located 630 meters north of the northern gate of Sirkap. The Temple was excavated in 1912–1913 by the Archaeological Survey of India under John Marshall. It has been called the most Hellenic structure yet found on Pakistani soil. The Temple is considered as a semi-Classical temple. Its design is essentially that of a Greek Temple, with a naos, pronaos and an opisthodomos at the back. Two Ionic columns at the front are framed by two anta walls as in a Greek distyle in antis layout. It seems that the temple had an outside wall with windows or doorways, in a layout similar to that of a Greek encircling row of columns (peripteral design). The dimensions of the Temple were around 45 x 30 meters. However, inside the Temple, between the naos and the opisthodomos, there is a heavy wall with stairs, which has led some authors to consider that it was designed to support a ziggurat as in a Zoroastrian or Magian temple. Besides the Pataliputra capital (3rd century BCE), the Ionic style is a rare occurrence in the Indian subcontinent, and it almost disappeared afterwards, apart from a pillar in Ahin Posh, which seems to be more Parthian than truly Hellenistic. It seems to have disappeared with the weakening of direct Greek presence in India, to be exclusively replaced by the numerous instances of Corinthian art that can be found in the Indo-Corinthian capitals of Gandhara. The Ionic capitals of the Jandial temple seem to be a rather provincial and dry version of the Ionic Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. However the design of the bases is quite pure, as are the wall moldings. Also the drums are finely joined with dowels. All this suggests work which was done under Greek supervision, or maybe by Greeks directly. The Temple may have been built in the 2nd century BCE under the Greeks in India (Indo-Greeks).