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Buchard Brentjes describes a unique find of the Soviet-Afghan team of archaeologists during their expedition to Northern Afghanistan — an impressive in size structure which resembled a mandala in shape. It is surprising that the discovered structure was almost three thousand years older than the Tibetan mandalas known at the time. Brentjes notes that structures with similar unusual architecture were also found in southern Uzbekistan — the settlement of ancient farmers of the 2nd–1st millennium BC, namely Sappalitepa. Brentjes focuses his paper to the question what the purpose of such exceptional structures of the Bronze Age in Central Asia was. For this purpose, the author examines the original meaning of mandalas in Tibetan religious life and confirms that the mandalas built in Tibet of sand were created exclusively for cults and not for a protective function. Mandalas were used once and destroyed after performing rituals dedicated to the Lama and the Buddha. Therefore, mandalas cannot be found in archaeological excavations. Drawing on the writings of Tucci [1972], Olschak, and Wangyal [1972], Brentjes concludes that the Lamaist mandala is a mythical representation of the world with its ruler, i.e., Lama at the moment of “coronation”. The transition of the ruler in the centre who must protect the moving world from decaying forces. And the square is an image of the world to be protected. Brentjes describes in the article similar forms of structures and objects in different countries: ancient China, Iran, on the Hindustan peninsula, depicting, according to the author, a mystical picture of the world. The author concludes that it does not make a breakthrough difference to speculate about the common basis of mandalas, square or round cities as symbols of the world, palaces, and mausoleums with a square layout and domed halls. But the discovery of the “mandalas” of Sappalitepa and Daschly-3, as well as the round-square city, allows us to make assumptions the structures were made in the later Bactrian period of the 2nd millennium BC and continued to exist in the Eurasian steppe and India, as well as in China.

The “Proto-Mandala” of Daschly-3: How to Embody the Idea of the World Lord in Architectural Form