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basava: “ Bamiyan, Afghanistan ”
Once an impressive link to Afghanistan’s Buddhist past, now a sad reminder of intolerance towards other cultures.
Prior to 1998, single-most iconic symbol of rural and untouched Afghanistan, was a pair of giant Buddha statues that stood in their hillside niches near a beautiful rustic place, Bamiyan. An ancient traveller mentions that if heaven is to be ever found on Earth, it would be in Bamiyan only. The distant snow covered peaks from north and south, surrounding grayish-brownish mountain ranges with razor cut vertical cliffs from all sides and right in the middle a refreshing green river basin, which itself is at an height of 8000 feet, is how Bamiyan can be described. The river, the greenish-yellowish fields on both the banks, dotted with earthen forts make the landscape stunningly beautiful and picturesque and make it look as if a model has been laid out. It is said that whenever anyone entered the Bamiyan valley, his mind automatically felt detached from the problems of his world. This probably was the reason why Buddhist monks were attracted to Bamiyan in the first place. No one precisely knows, when the Bamiyan Buddhas were carved out of the hillside. The archeologists now believe with the application of new carbon dating method that smaller image of the two was carved out in 507 CE and larger image was carved in 554 CE. In the year 632 CE, a learned Chinese monk made a journey by land from China to India in search of the original Buddhist scriptures and teachings. His name was Xuan Zang and he had believed that true Buddhist religion was being practiced only in India. He stayed at the Nalanda university, in present day Bihar state of India and had completed his learning of the true religion as per his belief. Every one knows this part of the history, yet very few understand that Xuan Zang's travelogues are perhaps our only guide books about the political, social and religious conditions of this region in those times. Xuan Zang had traveled to India by a route passing through present day Afghanistan. Being a Buddhist monk, he had considered that traveling through a particular region of present day Afghanistan was of paramount importance to him. This region was located to the south of the state of Bactria and part of the Hindukush mountain ranges and was known as Bamiyan. To visit Bamiyan and pay his respects to the Huge Buddha statues there, was of utmost importance to him. Xuen Zang has left detailed description about Bamiyan and the huge Buddha statues there in his travelogues. As per Xuan Zang's description, there were three images of Buddha. Two standing images and a third image of sleeping Buddha at the base. This sleeping Buddha was 1000 feet long. This third image however finds no mention in subsequent history anywhere. The smaller standing image on left was 114 feet high and the taller image on right was 165 feet high. These images were not completely carved out of stone. Their shapes were roughly carved out and subsequently a cement formed by grinding earth, hay and horse's hair together with some binder was applied all over the rough images to give final shape to the image. A coat of paint was given over the cement coating layer. Afghanistan's extremely dry weather had ensured that this cement coating and the paint layer would have a long life that can survive for centuries. The larger Buddha image was painted in blood red colour, whereas the smaller image was painted in multicolours. Xuan Zang says that the smaller image was painted golden. The apparel worn by Buddha in these images had a distinct Greek touch. Experts have said that it was obviously seen that both images were influenced by the Gandhar, Greek and Persian sculpture. On both sides of the rock cut cave or shelter, in which the Buddha images were sculptured, there were many small cave like structures cut in the wall. Wall painting similar to Ajintha caves were painted on the walls of these caves. With this decoration, the Buddha images and the entire scene looked very majestic and grand. The calm and quiet of the affluent Bamiyan was destroyed for the first time in 1272 when great conqueror Genghis Khan sent a small army led by his grandson to capture Bamiyan. In the ensuing battle, the grandson was hit by an arrow and died. After learning about this, Genghis Khan was so angry that he sent his army to Bamiyan with orders that no human or animal should survive the onslaught. The signs and remnants of the total ruin and destruction brought about, are still visble in form of some of the ruined forts. Luckily, Genghis Khan's soldiers were scared of touching the Buddha images and these were saved. In the fifteenth century, then Amir of Afghanistan, Babur loved the beauty of Bamiyan and made efforts to bring back old glory to Bamiyan. However, since the silk route trade had diminished then, Bamiyan remained in the backgrounds. When Mughal king Aurangjeb came to power in Delhi, he tried to disfigure Bamiyan Buddhas. Luckily again his soldiers were not able to achieve much, except for slight disfigurement of the Buddha faces. After these historic attempts to destroy the giant statues failed, Bamiyan Buddhas were left in relative peace till 1998, when another band of Muslim fanatics known as Taliban, captured power in Afghanistan and decided to demolish the Buddha statues. Taliban cadres were keen to destroy Bamiyan ever since 1998. Initially Taliban destroyed many small Buddha images carved in small caves on both sides of major Buddha images. The history lovers from all over world requested Afghanistan Taliban not to destroy Bamiyan Buddhas and make the world loose one of its historic monuments. This was of no avail. Finally in February 2001, Chief of Taliban in Afghanistan, Mulla Umar gave orders to destroy Bamyan Buddhas. In March 2001, Taliban planted powerful mines near the Buddha images and both the images were destroyed and big heaps of crushed stone and loose earth was all that remained of Bamiyan Buddhas. In 2003, United nations declared Bamiyan as a world heritage site and efforts were started to save whatever remained at Bamiyan. This also means that any modifications to the face of the cliff would, in practice, have to be approved by UNESCO's Expert Working Group. A controversy has now arisen, whether to re build the giant statues or just maintain the caves or niches, in which giant statues once stood. In 1970, before Taliban had destroyed the statues, Indian conservators had re-built the giant feet of the statues, to replace the missing originals. Last year, German conservators doing stabilisation work on the eastern niche, quietly began building pillars to support the stonework and protect visitors from potential collapse. However, what they had built looked looked much like the feet built earlier by Indians. When UNESCO discovered, what was happening, it immediately asked the Afghan government to order the work suspended. Germans are however not convinced. German branch of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, was awarded the contract by UNESCO to do much of the conservation work on site. Michael Petzet, an archaeologist, is the president of this German organization. He says making no secret of his intent: "These feet, it was only the idea for the safety of the whole structure,and maybe in the future if the Afghan government wants to make a little bit more, they can build upon this." Brendan Cassar, Chief of Cultural Heritage, is the UNESCO's culture specialist in Afghanistan. He disagrees with what Michael Petzet says. In support of his argument, Casser says: "Our priority has been to stabilise iconic elements of the World Heritage site that are unstable. The point is, a very small percentage of the surface remains, some pieces are the size of a car and some a grain of sand." In addition, the type of sandstone from which the Buddhas were carved is highly unstable. He feels that one can not go to step 10 unless steps 1 to 9 are addressed, to make a good restoration. There is also a problem of availability of funds. Pledges from donors to fund even the basic work have fallen short by at least $700,000. Afghanistan Government wants that at least the smaller statue of the two should be re-built. According to Abdul Ahad Abassi, head of monuments for the Afghan culture ministry, the Government has formally requested that the smaller Buddha be rebuilt, and UNESCO's World Heritage Committee is studying the issue. Abdullah Mahmoodi, of the Bamiyan Tourism Association says: “I say rebuild one of them to attract tourists, particularly from Buddhist countries like Japan and South Korea. One ( empty niche) should remain like that to remind people what the Taliban did. The best way to protect our monuments is to make them valuable again." With opinions so passionately split, Bamiyan Buddhas are unlikely to re-emerge from the heaps of rubble. 25th March 2014
The golden icons survived Genghis Khan, but not, sadly, the Taliban.
NCSCOS World History Objectives 6.06 (Trace the development of internal conflicts due to differences in religion, race, culture, and group loyalties in various areas of the world) This picture shows one of the two famous Bamiyan Buddha statues that were carved out of a mountainside in the Bamiyan valley of Afghanistan. This is the taller of the two statues; it stood at 180 ft. tall and was created in 554 AD. After the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan, it declared that the statues violated Islamic law and had them destroyed by dynamite in 2001. I would have students look at this image as part of a lesson on the clashing of cultures and religions and I would divide them into groups to discuss the following prompt: Imagine that you are an Afghan Buddhist watching members of the Taliban preparing to dynamite the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. What are you thinking? What would you want to say to the Taliban if you got the chance? Can you draw any parallels between the clash of cultures and religions in Afghanistan to other time periods we have studied--or to situations in our world today? Photo source: www.hsh.k12.nf.ca/religionart/buddhism.htm
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. – Helen Keller Porbandar, India Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fal…
When I was in India in the 1970s I thought of going to Afghanistan specifically to see the great Buddhas of Bamiyan. I had the time, the money and the interest. As it happens, I kept putting this trip off and in the end never got around to it. If the various schemes for resurrecting the Buddhas ever comes to pass; constructing copies, projecting some sort of hologram onto the niches where they once stood, etc. I probably won’t go. Looking at a reproduction of an original has always seemed to me to be rather pointless. For me, the great Buddhas that once fascinated the world but now they’ve gone for ever. Recently I browsed through the Llewelyn Morgan’s Buddhas of Bamiyan, (2012, 221 pages) which despite containing nothing new and being padded with a lot of the usual commonplaces about “the Silk Road”, is not a bad account of these great ancient marvels. The Further Reading section is excellent. The truth is that we know very little about the history of the Buddhas, certainly not enough to fill more than a pamphlet. The fullest account, merge though it is, of Bamiyan and its Buddhas is found in the travelogue of the famous Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang with a few extra facts included in his biography. “To the northeast of the royal city there is at a corner of the mountain a rock standing statue of the Buddha one hundred and forty or fifty feet high, a dazzling golden color and adorned with gems. To the east here is a monastery built by a former king of the country. Further east of this monastery is a standing statue of the Buddha in copper more than a hundred feet high. It is made of separate pieces which were then welded together. In another monastery two or three li east of the city there is a recumbent image of the Buddha depicted attaining Nirvana more than a thousand feet long. It is here that four times a year the king holds an assembly in which he offers everything from his queen down to the national treasury to the monks. When everything has been given he then gives himself to the monks and then his officials pay the monks a ransom to get himself and his queen back.” The second statue at Bamiyan was not made of copper as Xuanzang thought, but rather was sheathed in copper plates. In 2008 archaeologists announced that they had discovered the remains of the reclining Buddha mentioned by the pilgrim. There is a much defaced large sitting Buddha in Bamiyan too which Xuanzang did not mention; perhaps because it was built after his visit. He did mention however, that there ten monasteries in and around Bamiyan housing several thousand monks, two of them, Aryadasa and Aryasena, revered for their deep learning. When Xuanzang first turned up in the city, the king and the inhabitants were amazed to that he had come all the way from China and they treated him with great hospitality and guided him around all the sights. There are a few very brief mentions of the great Buddhas by Islamic travellers and historians, the longest by the great polymath Al Kindi (801-873). In his Kitab al Fihrist he writes: “They have two idols, one of which is called the Gold-red Buddha and the other White Buddha. Their forms are carved out of the sides of the great valley, cut from the rock of the mountain. The height of each one of them us 80 cubits, so that they can be seen from a great distance… [The] people of India go on pilgrimages to these two idols, bearing with them offerings, incense and fragrant woods. If the eye should fall upon them from a distance, a man would be obliged to lower his eyes, overawed by them.” Parts of Afghanistan were conquered by Arab armies by the end of the 8th century but in eastern region Buddhism may have lingered for another 300 years. Arab sources speak of Bamiyan being “converted” at least three times: in 754-75; again in 775-85; Then in 870. An Arab strongman captured the city and sent as loot “fifty idols of gold and silver” to Baghdad, suggesting that the monasteries were not surviving but thriving at that date. Even in an inscription dated 1078 a local official was able to describe himself as a “monastery keeper”. What finished off Bamiyan’s Buddhism was the Mongol invasion of 1221 which left not just the city and the monasteries but the whole region devastated. The Taliban were not the first people to try to destroy the Buddhas, Islamic iconoclasts had been hacking away at them for centuries. The Emperor Aurangzeb ordered cannons to blast the statues as did a later Persian king in the 18th century. Both attempts damaged but did not destroy the statues. In 1847 the then king of Afghanistan succeeded in having the faces cut off. Holes were made in the front of the heads and wooden pegs were hammered into them until finally huge slabs with the facial features on them split off and crashed to the ground. The only reason the images were never completely destroyed was that they were simply too big. While I think that the final destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan was a tragedy from a cultural and archaeological point of view, I don’t think it was significant as far as Buddhism is concerned. I am not a great fan of big Buddhas. I consider them a waste of resources that could and should be better used for Dhamma activities. Grandiose monuments are no substitute for projects to clarify and promote the Dhamma.
Buddha of Bamiyan Afghanistan 1992 before destruction, Steve Mc Curry Built in 554 AD in the blended classic Gandhara art. Destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.
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Once an impressive link to Afghanistan’s Buddhist past, now a sad reminder of intolerance towards other cultures.
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On the cliff face of a sandstone mountain, visible from the ancient Silk Road near the town of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, are two massive voids...
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One of the two destroyed Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Note all the caves in the walls for monks.
taipei.tzuchi.org.tw/rhythms/magazine/content/33/1/conten... Bamiyan's Buddha 阿富汗巴米揚大佛 掌控阿富汗政局的塔里班（Taliban）政權，下令摧毀阿富汗境內所有雕像，包括伊斯蘭教統治之前的巨型佛雕在內。其領袖歐瑪在二月二十六日的宣告令中表示：「伊 斯蘭教只有一個真神，這些雕像在那裏受到人們崇拜，這是不對的，他們應該被摧毀，以避免未來再受到崇拜。」 塔里班的新聞文化部長賈瑪於今年三月一日再度指出，命令已於一日開始執行，包括巴米揚（Bamiyan）大佛在內，將全數予以摧毀。 聯合國教科文組織（UNSCO）秘書長松浦晃一郎，一日指控塔里班政權的行動是人類文明資產的一項重大浩劫，他並指出這只是塔里班單獨的行動，未受其他伊斯蘭國家共同支持。 欧洲同步加速辐射中心二十二日在其网站上发布消息说，科学家在阿富汗巴米扬大佛附近的洞窟内发现了迄今最古老的油画。 消息说，在五十个洞窟发现的壁画中，十二个洞窟内的壁画以油画形式绘就，所用油料可能来自胡桃或罂粟。对油料样本的检测显示，其年代可以追溯到公元七世纪。 发现油画的科考小组负责人谷口阳子（音译）说，「这是世界上最古老的油画」，尽管古代罗马人和埃及人也曾利用乾的油料，但仅用于药物和化妆品。 此间媒体报道说，欧洲人在公元十三世纪才开始把油料添加到绘画中去，而欧洲油画的广泛出现要到十五世纪初。 欧洲同步加速辐射中心认为，这些油画描绘有身披袈裟的佛像和其它神话人物，可能出自往来于古代丝绸之路的艺术家之手。 巴米扬大佛建于公元六世纪左右，二○○一年三月被当时控制阿富汗的塔利班武装炸毁
Buddha of Bamiyan Afghanistan 1992 before destruction, Steve Mc Curry Built in 554 AD in the blended classic Gandhara art. Destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.
