Wine in Gandhāra Notes on a Mythical and Economical Geography

Abstract

The contribution focuses on the geography of places associated by the Greeks in the retinue of Alexander with wine and the myth of Dionysus and Herakles in Gandhāra, specifically the city of Nysa in the Kunar/Chitral valley. The study then analyses the economic spaces of wine production in the region until late antiquity. The existence of an actual ‘Wine Belt’ has been hypothesised in the past on the basis of archaeological data. This encompasses both Swat and the Kunar/Chitral area and roughly corresponds to the cultural region today called Greater Kafiristan or Peristan.