[Reader-list] Bamiyan

[inder salim]

great news


On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 9:27 PM, S. Jabbar <sonia.jabbar at gmail.com> wrote:
> New Bamiyan Buddha find amid destruction
>
> Nov 8, 2008
>
> BAMIYAN, Afghanistan (AFP) ‹ "We got him!" screamed Afghan archaeologist
> Anwar Khan Fayez as he leapt from the pit beneath the towering sandstone
> cliffs, where the Bamiyan Buddhas once stood.
>
> Seven years after Taliban militants blew up the two 1,500-year-old statues
> in a fit of Islamist zealotry, a French-Afghan team in September uncovered a
> new, 19-metre (62-foot) "Sleeping Buddha" buried in the earth.
>
> The news that a third Buddha escaped the Taliban's wrath has caused
> excitement in this scenic valley, where the caverns that housed the ruined
> statues are an eerie reminder of Afghanistan's past and present woes.
>
> "It was a happy moment for all of us when the first signs appeared. Our
> years-long efforts had somehow paid off," Fayez told AFP.
>
> The team, led by France-based archaeologist Zemaryalai Tarzi, made the find
> while hunting for a lost 300-metre reclining Buddha mentioned in an account
> by seventh-century Chinese monk Xuan Zang.
>
> The Afghan-born Tarzi began mapping the site nearly 30 years ago but decades
> of conflict and the rise of the 1996-2001 Taliban regime put the search on
> hold.
>
> Then in March 2001 came the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, until then
> the world's largest standing Buddha statues.
>
> Hewn into the cliffs in the sixth century by Buddhist pilgrims on the famed
> Silk Route, the statues had survived attacks by several Muslim emperors down
> the ages, while even Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan had spared them.
>
> But with the backing of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda movement, Taliban leader
> Mullah Mohammad Omar declared that they were idols that were against Islamic
> law.
>
> Defying international appeals, the Taliban spent a month using first
> anti-aircraft guns and then dynamite to obliterate them.
>
> Saddened but with renewed determination, Tarzi and his team returned soon
> after US-led forces and the Northern Alliance ousted the Taliban in late
> 2001 to renew their search for the giant missing Buddha.
>
> What they found instead, in September this year, were parts of a previously
> unknown, smaller Buddha figure, including a thumb, forefinger, palm, parts
> of its arm, body and the bed on which it lay.
>
> "This is the most significant find since we started here," Abdul Hameed
> Jalia, the director of monuments and historical sites for Bamiyan province,
> told AFP at the excavation site of the new 19-metre Buddha.
>
> "At first they found part of the leg but they weren't sure what it was,"
> said Jalia. "But when they found more, Mr Fayez screamed out of happiness
> and ran to our office to find Mr Tarzi."
>
> Fayez said the head and other parts were largely destroyed, possibly by Arab
> invaders in the ninth century.
>
> "We have not found the whole statue. But we can tell from other parts that
> it appears to be 19-metres long," Fayez said.
>
> The site has now been covered with earth to protect the Buddha from both the
> ravages of the harsh Afghan winter and from the attention of antiquities
> thieves.
>
> Tarzi told AFP in an e-mail that he and a number of French colleagues aimed
> to return next summer to dig out the rest of the statue.
>
> Meanwhile, there are fresh clues about the 300-metre Buddha, officials say.
>
> What appear to be the remnants of a gate complex that may have led to the
> statue have been discovered under an apparently collapsed section of cliff
> between the two holes left by the Taliban.
>
> "Mr Tarzi's team has found signs that indicate that the big lying Buddha is
> there and has 70 percent hopes that they will find it," said Najibullah
> Harar, head of Bamiyan's information and culture department.
>
> Amid hopes that they could one day be rebuilt, Afghan, Japanese and German
> teams are also stabilising the sites of the destroyed statues -- the bigger
> 55-metre figure known as Salsal and the 38-metre statue known as Shahmama.
>
> Boulder-sized chunks of the Buddhas still lie where they fell, each
> individually labelled. Ghostly outlines of the two figures are still etched
> in the rockface and twisted metal shell casings litter the ground.
>
> Archaeologists' efforts have been helped by the fact that Bamiyan --
> inhabited by Shia Muslims from the Hazara ethnic minority that was once
> persecuted by the Taliban -- has been a relative oasis of calm.
>
> But ongoing debate over whether to reconstruct the Buddhas reflects the
> uncertainties that haunt post-Taliban Afghanistan.
>
> "It is the desire and the wish of the Bamiyan people to see, if not both,
> then at least one rebuilt," Habiba Sorabi, the governor of Bamiyan province,
> told AFP in an interview at her office overlooking the statues.
>
> Rebuilding the Buddhas could help foster a tourist industry in the
> desperately poor region, which lies 200 kilometres (124 miles) northwest of
> the relatively prosperous capital Kabul, she said.
>
> UNESCO declared Bamiyan a World Heritage Site in 2003 and there have been
> discussions with international partners about using the process of
> anastylosis, by which ruined monuments are reassembled from old fragments
> and new materials.
>
> "But unfortunately the central government does not want to work on it,"
> added Sorabi, who is the only female provincial governor in Afghanistan. "It
> is a shame."
>
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