Hidden In The Hills: The Central Asian Horsemen Of Kashmir

(MENAFN- Kashmir Observer)
Photo Courtesy: Natalia Polosmak

By Fiza Masoodi

In June 2017, Natalia Polosmak, a Russian archaeologist known for uncovering the Siberian Ice Maiden, stepped into the thick woods of Gora Gali in Pirpanjal region. She had traveled thousands of miles following a rumour.

It was just a vague tip about strange statues lost in the mountains. She thought she might find a few carved rocks. What she found instead stopped her in her tracks.

Nearly 200 life-sized stone horsemen, frozen mid-ride, were scattered across the forest floor.

Some stood upright, their stone faces staring toward the horizon. Others had fallen, overtaken by roots, moss, and mud. The figures were hauntingly detailed: high-cheekboned riders wearing boots and tunics, holding curved daggers, small bows, and goblets.

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Some shared a single horse, packed two or three at a time. Women appeared beside or behind them, draped in carved skirts and ornaments. They seemed part army, part funeral procession.

“I have never seen anything like this in India,” Polosmak later recounted.“These are not purely Indian faces.”

She was right.

The statues didn't look like anything in India's official archaeological record. To her, they pointed elsewhere-back to Central Asia, to a nomadic empire that swept through parts of South Asia 1,500 years ago and then seemed to vanish.

The Hephthalites, also called the White Huns, were feared horsemen who once ruled large swaths of north India. They were said to be brutal and mysterious. Their skulls were artificially stretched, their art a mix of Persian, Gandharan, and steppe influences. They built little and left behind fewer records. Much of their story remains a guess.

Until, perhaps, now.

Polosmak first saw two statues like these at the Archaeology Museum in Srinagar in 2013. They had no labels and no context. They stayed in her memory. Four years later, with help from the Gerda Henkel Foundation and scholars from the University of Kashmir, she set out to find their origin.

The path to Gora Gali was unmarked. Locals led her there. The statues were hidden in two clusters at high altitudes. The area's name, Ghoragali, literally means“horse pass.” The people in nearby villages treated the figures with a mix of reverence and confusion. Some called them Pandavas from the Hindu epic. Others said they were devtas, divine guardians. A few used fragments of them as laundry platforms or garden walls.

“We don't know who made them,” said Ghulam Rasool, a village elder.“But they have always been here.”

Polosmak and her team, which included Dr. Mohammad Ajmal Shah and Yatoo Mumtaz Ahmad, documented the entire site using 3D laser scanning and drone surveys. A Russian company created detailed digital models of the statues, mapping every curve and crack. The idea was to preserve what they could before time and weather destroyed the rest.

The carvings, it turned out, were more than artistic. They told stories. Some horsemen gripped swords with mushroom-shaped pommels. Others had bows, arrows, and elaborate saddles. Some horses showed teeth, their mouths open in mid-snarl. Traces of red paint clung to the stone, suggesting they were once brightly colored. The details matched artifacts from Central Asia, even as local influences appeared in their style and weapons.

One rider had a long nape, flat and stretched-the clearest sign yet of the Hephthalite practice of skull deformation.

Nearby, the team found stone basins fed by streams, shaped like ritual ablution pools. They were decorated with lotus flowers, Dharma wheels, and other Buddhist and Hindu symbols. This blend of spiritual markers, like the mix of foreign and local aesthetics, hinted at a period of cultural fusion and flux.

Dr. Ajmal Shah believes the statues date to the 5th or 6th century, when the White Huns ruled this region. Coins from that era show similar faces. The name of the nearby village, Gool, may come from“gula,” a Hun title for warrior-rulers.

Yet no official Indian agency has moved to protect the site.

There are no signs, fences, or guards. The Archaeological Survey of India was informed but never followed up. Rain erodes the carvings. Trees grow into their cracks. Some statues have already disappeared. No one knows if they were taken or destroyed.

A former ASI official called the silence a historic failure.“This should be a major archaeological find,” he said.“But it's being forgotten in real time.”

The digital scans offer one lifeline. They may one day form the basis of a virtual museum. But the real statues still lie in the woods, exposed to weather and wandering cattle. No one has excavated the ground beneath them. Their full story may still be buried.

Some scholars think the site is a war memorial. Others say it could be sacred, linked to ancient funeral rituals or collective sacrifice. The repetitive faces, somber stares, and presence of women and children suggest more than just a military display.

“These may be the dead,” Polosmak wrote in a Russian journal.“Or their guardians. Stone witnesses to a world that is already gone.”

Back in the village, life moves on. Locals herd goats and chop firewood. Tourists rarely visit. The forest keeps its secret.

And the stone horsemen, their mouths half-open, keep watching.

• Fiza Masoodi is a Srinagar-based writer whose work has appeared in many publications. Her debut book, set against the mountains and their myth, will be released this fall.

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