Buddhas of Bamyan

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Buddha . Dharma . Sangha

Three Dharma Seals
Anicca . Dukkha . Anatta

Karma . Rebirth
Samsara . Nirvana
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Four Frames of Reference
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Four Bases of Power
Five Faculties
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Seven Factors of Awakening
Noble Eightfold Path

Bodhisattva
Four Great Vows
Ten Great Vows

Buddhist Cosmology

History of Buddhism
Timeline of Buddhism

Three Baskets

Buddhist Webring

1 History
2 Destruction
3 Commitment to rebuild
- 3.1 Recent developments
4 External links
5 References

One of the Buddhas of Bamyan as it stood in 1963.

The Buddhas of Bamyan (Persian: تندیس‌های بودا در باميان tandis-ha-ye buda dar bamiyaan) were two monumental statues of standing Buddhas carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley of central Afghanistan, situated 230 km (143 miles) northwest of Kabul at an altitude of 2500 meters (8,202 feet). Most likely built in the fifth or sixth centuries, the statues represented the classic blended style of Greco-Buddhist art.

The main bodies were hewn directly from the sandstone cliffs, but details were modelled in mud mixed with straw, coated with stucco. This coating, practically all of which was worn away long ago, was painted to enhance the expressions of the faces, hands and folds of the robes. The lower parts of the statues' arms were constructed from the same mud-straw mix while supported on wooden armatures. It is believed that the upper parts of their faces were made from great wooden masks or casts. The rows of holes that can be seen in photographs were spaces that held wooden pegs which served to stabilize the outer stucco.

They were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Japan, Switzerland, and UNESCO, among others, have pledged support for the rebuilding of the statues.

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History

Bâmiyân valley with Buddhas

Bamyan lies on the Silk Road, a caravan route linking the markets of China with those of South Asia, Central Asia, Middle East, and Europe. It was the site of several Buddhist monasteries, and a thriving center for religion, philosophy, and Greco-Buddhist art. It was a Buddhist religious site from the second century up to the time of the Islamic invasion in the ninth century.

Monks at the monasteries lived as hermits in small caves carved into the side of the Bamyan cliffs. Many of these monks embellished their caves with religious statuary and elaborate, brightly-colored frescoes.

The two most prominent statues were the giant, standing Buddhas, measuring 55 and 37 meters (180 and 121 feet) high respectively, the largest examples of standing Buddha carvings in the world. They were perhaps the most famous cultural landmarks of the region and the site was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site along with surrounding cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamyan Valley.

The smaller of the two statues, about 120 feet tall, was built in the 3rd century CE. The larger one, at 175 feet, was constructed in the 5th century CE. The statues are believed to have been built by the Indo-European Kushans and Hephthalites at the hey day of their empires. Ironically, the above mentioned tribes also formed the basis of Pashtun ethnogenesis — the ethnic group from which the Taliban drew its core following [1].

Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hsüan-tsang (Xuanzang) passed through the area around 630 CE and described Bamyan as a flourishing Buddhist centre "with more than ten monasteries and more than a thousand monks", and he noted that both Buddha figures were "decorated with gold and fine jewels" (Wriggins, 1995).

A monumental sitting Buddha similar in style to those at Bamyan still exists in the Bingling Temple caves in China's Gansu province.

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Destruction

When Mahmud of Ghazni conquered Afghanistan in the 12th century, the Buddhas and frescoes were spared from destruction. Aurangzeb, the last Mughal emperor distinguished for his religious zeal, employed heavy artillery in an attempt to destroy the statues.Genghis Khan and Nadir Shah too had cannon fire directed at the statues. But over the centuries the statues had largely been left untouched.

Photograph of a statue being dynamited on March 21, 2001

In July 1999, Mullah Mohammed Omar issued a decree in favor of the preservation of the Bamyan Buddhas. Because Afghanistan's Buddhist population no longer existed, which removed the possibility of the statues being worshiped, he added: "The government considers the Bamyan statues as an example of a potential major source of income for Afghanistan from international visitors. The Taliban states that Bamyan shall not be destroyed but protected." [2]

Afghan's Islamist clerics would begin a campaign to crack down on "un-Islamic" segments of Afghan society. The Taliban soon banned all forms of imagery, music and sports, including television, in accordance with what they considered a strict interpretation of Islamic law [3].

In March 2001, according to Agence France Presse in Kabul, the decree declared, "Based on the verdict of the clergymen and the decision of the Supreme Court of the Islamic Emirate (Taliban) all the statues around Afghanistan must be destroyed. All the statues in the country should be destroyed because these statues have been used as idols and deities by the non-believers before. They are respected now and may be turned into idols in future too. Only Allah, the Almighty, deserves to be worshiped, not anyone or anything else."

Information and Culture Minister Qadratullah Jamal told Associated Press of a decision by 400 religious clerics from across Afghanistan declaring the Buddhist statues against the tenets of Islam. "They came out with a consensus that the statues were un-Islamic," said Jamal.

On March 6, the London Times quoted Mullah Mohammed Omar as stating, "Muslims should be proud of smashing idols. It has given praise to God that we have destroyed them." He had clearly changed his position from being in favor of the statues to being against them. During a March 13 interview for Japan's Mainichi Shimbun, Foreign Afghan Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel stated that the destruction was anything but a retaliation against the international community for economic sanctions: "We are destroying the Buddha statues in accordance with Islamic law and it is purely a religious issue".

On March 1, The New York Times reports, that a Taliban envoy said the Islamic government made its decision in a rage after a foreign delegation offered money to preserve the ancient works while a million Afghans faced starvation. The New York Times also added, however, that other reports "have said the religious leaders were debating the move for months, and ultimately decided that the statues were idolatrous and should be obliterated."

Then Taliban Ambassador-at-large, (and current Yale student) Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, said that the destruction of the statues was carried out during the famine in Afghanistan after a Swedish government earmarked money to be provided to restore the statues and refused to allow it to be used to aid Afghan Children. Hashimi is reported as saying: "When the Afghani head council asked them to provide the money to feed the children instead of fixing the statues, they refused and said, 'No, the money is just for the statues, not for the children'. Herein, they made the decision to destroy the statues" [4].

On April 19th 2004, in an interview to a Pakistani journalist Mohammad Shehzad, Mullah Mohammad Omar said the following, "I did not want to destroy the Bamyan Buddha. In fact, some foreigners came to me and said they would like to conduct the repair work of the Bamyan Buddha that had been slightly damaged due to rains. This shocked me. I thought, these callous people have no regard for thousands of living human beings — the Afghans who are dying of hunger, but they are so concerned about non-living objects like the Buddha. This was extremely deplorable. That is why I ordered its destruction. Had they come for humanitarian work, I would have never ordered the Buddhas' destruction."

The Islamist Taliban government decreed that the statues, which had survived intact for over 1,500 years, were idolatrous and un-Islamic. During the destruction, Taliban Information Minister Qudratullah Jamal lamented that, "this work of destruction is not as easy as people might think. You can't knock down the statues by shelling as both are carved into a cliff; they are firmly attached to the mountain." The two largest Buddhas faced dynamite and tank barrages and were demolished after almost a month of intensive bombardment.

According to UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura, a meeting of ambassadors from the 54 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) was conducted. All OIC states - including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, three countries that officially recognised the Taliban government - joined the protest to spare the monuments (CNN. A statement issued by the ministry of religious affairs of Taliban regime justified the destruction as being in accordance with Islamic law [http://www.beliefnet.com/story/70/story_7096_1.html AFP News. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would later condemn the destruction as "savage." A Swiss documentary reported that locals claimed to have seen Pakistani and Saudi engineers on site to help with the destruction of the statues.[5]. A Pakistani charity, Al Rasheed Trust, based in Karachi, had published a special calendar with photographs of the destructions to commemorate the destruction.

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Commitment to rebuild

Though the figures of the two large Buddhas are almost completely destroyed, their outlines and some features are still recognizable within the recesses. It is also still possible for visitors to explore the monks' caves and the passages which connect them. As part of the international effort to rebuild Afghanistan after the Taliban war, the Government of Japan and several other organizations, among them the Afghanistan Institute in Bubendorf, Switzerland along with the ETH in Zurich, have committed themselves to rebuilding the two largest Buddhas; anastylosis is one technique being considered.

The site of the Buddhas in August 2005

In May 2002, a mountainside sculpture of the Buddha was carved out of a mountain in Sri Lanka. It was designed to closely resemble one of the Buddhas of Bamyan.

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Recent developments

In May 2002, a mountainside sculpture of the Buddha was carved out of a mountain in Sri Lanka. It was designed to closely resemble one of the Buddhas of Bamyan.

In December 2004, Japan|Japanese researchers discovered that the wall paintings at Bamyan were actually painted between the 5th century to 9th centuries, rather than the 8th centuries as previously believed. The discovery was made by analysing radioactive isotopes contained in straw fibers found beneath the paintings. Further discoveries are expected to be made after comparing the paintings' dates and styles.

The Afghan government has commissioned Japanese artist Hiro Yamagata to recreate the Bamyan Buddhas using fourteen laser systems to project the images of the Buddhas onto the cliff where they once stood. The laser systems will be solar-powered and wind-powered. The project, which will cost an estimated $9 million, is currently pending UNESCO approval. If approved, the project is estimated to be completed by 2007.

In September 2005, Mawlawi Mohammed Islam Mohammadi, Taliban governor of Bamyan province at the time of the destruction, was elected to the Afghan Parliament.

Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei made a 95-minute documentary "The Giant Buddhas" (released in March 2006), on the statues, the international reactions to it, and an overview of the controversy. The movie makes the controversial claim (quoting a local Afghan) that the destruction was ordered by Osama Bin Laden and that initially, Mullah Omar and the Afghans in Bamyan had opposed the destruction [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1466974.cms (Times of India Mar 27 2006.

In the summer of 2006, Afghan officials are deciding the timetable for the re-construction of the statues. The mullahs in the province have stated that the destruction was an atrocity and the statues deserve restoration. While they wait for the Afghan government and international community to decide whether to rebuild them, a $1.3 million UNESCO-funded project is sorting out the chunks of clay and plaster — ranging from boulders weighing several tons to fragments the size of tennis balls — and sheltering them from the elements.

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