It’s
hard to believe that Afghanistan, a country torn by war and religious
extremism, was once a peaceful Buddhist nation. Pilgrims from all over Central
and South Asia came to this remote mountainous region, built monasteries and
colossal statues, dug caves into the sandstone and meditated.
Buddhism
was brought to Afghanistan in the first century by the Kushan Empire of the
historic region of Bactria in Central Asia. The most famous Kushan Emperor,
Kanishka the Great, was a great patron of Buddhism. His conquests and patronage
of Buddhism played an important role in the development of the Silk Road, and
the spread of Buddhism across the Karakoram range to India, China and other
Asian countries.
The
175 feet high Buddha statue in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, destroyed in 2001. Photo
credit: Afghanistan Embassy
Once
Islam bulldozed into Central Asia and this ancient Hindu Kush region of
Afghanistan, the religiously intolerant rulers ordered the destruction of all
Buddhist sites. Islam becoming the state religion and Buddhism vanished.
Decades of war have turned to rubble many important archeological sites and
museum collections were either looted or destroyed. The last acts of aggression
happened not too long ago, when two monumental statues of Buddha near the town
of Bamiyan were blown to bits by the Taliban in 2001.
The
Bamiyan area was a prominent center of Buddhism. The seventh century Chinese
monk Hsuan-Tsang described the town as a flourishing Buddhist center “with more
than ten monasteries and more than a thousand monks”. The two Buddha figures
stood at 120 feet and 175 feet respectively, and were decorated in “dazzling
golden color and adorned with brilliant gems”. Historians believe that the
monumental Buddha sculptures were carved into the cliffs between the third to
sixth centuries. They were perhaps the most famous cultural landmarks of the
region attracting numerous pilgrims from all around.
Two women walk past the huge cavity where one of the
ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan used to stand.
The taller Buddha of Bamiyan before (left picture)
and after destruction (right).
The
ancient town of Samangan on the banks of Khulm River was also an important
Buddhist center. The town’s Buddhist past can still be seen in the form of a
rock-cut cave monastery complex and an adjacent stupa hewn out of the bed rock.
The
stupa of Takht-e-Rostam is located about 3 km from Samangan on top of a hill.
It was here, legends hold, that the mythical Persian king Rostam married his
bride Tamina. Takht-e-Rostam literally means “the throne of Rostam”. The stupa
was built during the waning days of the Kushan empire, possibly between the
fourth and fifth centuries. The empire was eventually wiped out in fifth
century by the invasions of the Hephthalites, the Huns and the rise of the
Gupta Empire in the east.
Unlike
other Buddhist stupas, the one of Takht-e Rostam is not located above ground,
but has been carved into the mountain rock, in a style that resembles the
monolithic churches of Ethiopia. This may have been done to camouflage the
monastery and stupa from invaders, or simply to escape the extreme summer heat.
The stupa is mounted by a Harmika and surrounded by a trench, eight meters deep,
the inside walls of which contains several caves and monastic cells for
meditation.
Another
historically significant Buddhist site under threat is the ancient settlement
of Mes Aynak, about 40 km from Kabul. From the third to the eighth centuries,
Mes Aynak was a spiritual hub with several multistory Buddhist monastery
complexes, containing chapels and other structures protected by high walls and
ancient watchtowers. Within these fortified complexes and residences
archaeologists have uncovered hundreds of Buddhist statues and clay stupas, and
other artifacts including gold jewelry, fragments of ancient manuscripts, and
walls adorned with frescoes. This ancient Buddhist settlement sits on top of
one of the world’s largest untapped deposits of copper ore. There is evidence
that this copper was mined in antiquity. It was copper that made the Buddhist
monks here wealthy.
“I do
not know of any other site where monasteries coexisted in perfect [symbiosis]
with production or industrial centers,” says Zemaryalai Tarzi, an Afghan
archaeologist. “These kinds of tight relationships between Buddhist monasteries
and the industrial or commercial exploiters of natural resources have no
precedent.”
A Buddhist stupa excavated at Mes Ainak.
Trouble
began in 2007 when the Afghanistan government granted a Chinese mining company
rights to mine copper in Mes Aynak. The site is estimated to contain some 12.5
million tons of copper worth tens of billions of dollars. Mining is certainly a
lucrative prospect that will help the country’s fragile economy, but digging
into the ground would destroy the site's archaeological remains. Intervention
by the international community have helped stall the plan, while millions of
dollars of funding from international bodies is currently being utilized to
recover as many artifacts as possible before mining starts.
The
National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul has been inundated with artifacts sent
from Mes Aynak. Lack of space has forced them to return many except the most
important pieces. Omara Khan Massoudi, the director of the museum, hopes that
someday they will be able to erect a local museum dedicated to preserving the
memory of Mes Aynak.
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