Buddhas of Bamiyan

Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamyan Valley

UNESCO World Heritage Site
Criteria	Cultural: i, ii, iii, iv, v.
Reference	208
Inscription	2003 (Twenty seventh Session)
Endangered	2003-

The Buddhas of Bamyan (Template:PerB - but hay-e bamiyaan) were two monumental statues of standing Buddhas carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan, situated 230 km (143 miles) northwest of Kabul at an altitude of 2500 meters (8,202 ft). Built during the sixth century, the statues represented the classic blended style of Indo-Greek art.

The main bodies were hewn directly from the sandstone cliffs, but details were modeled 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 larger one was painted carmine red and the smaller one was painted multiple colors. 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 intentionally dynamited and destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, after the Taliban government declared that they were "idols" (which are forbidden under Sharia law). International opinion strongly condemned the destruction of the Buddhas, which was viewed as an example of the intolerance of the Taliban and of fundamentalist Islam. Japan and Switzerland, among others, have pledged support for the rebuilding of the statues.

History

Bamyan lies on the Silk Road, a caravan route linking the markets of China with those of Western Asia. Until the eleventh century AD, Bamyan was part of the kingdom of Gandhara. It was the site of several Buddhist monasteries, and a thriving center for religion, philosophy, and Indian 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 Vairocana and Sakyamuni, measuring 55 and 37 metres (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 the surrounding cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamyan Valley. The statues represented the immense architectural skill of the Indian civilization as well as the promotion of such arts before being destroyed by Islamic forces.

The smaller of the two statues was built in AD 507, the larger in 554. The statues are believed to have been built by the Kushans, with the guidance of local Buddhist monks, at the heyday of their empire.

The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang passed through the area around AD 630 and described Bamyan as a flourishing Buddhist center "with more than ten monasteries and more than a thousand monks". He also noted that both Buddha figures were "decorated with gold and fine jewels" (Wriggins, 1995). Xuan Zang's account is intriguing as he mentions a third, even larger, reclining statue of Buddha; although it is generally believed destroyed, some archaeological expeditions are searching for it.

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

The destruction of the statues led to widespread anger in Europe and North America because, in part, it was an affront to many Westerners who believe that religious expression is a fundamental freedom. The destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas became a symbol of oppression and a rallying point. Despite the fact that Afghans are Muslim, they too had embraced their past and many were appalled by this destruction.

History of attacks on the Buddhas

Eleventh century to the twentieth century

When Mahmud of Ghazni attacked Afghanistan and part of west India in the eleventh century, the destruction of the Buddhas and frescoes were beyond his understanding therefore he moved on to looting Buddhist monasteries and other important artifacts. Nader Shah fired cannons at the statues but it was beyond his capabilities as well. Therefore over the centuries, the highly uneducated Islamic attackers were not able to destroy it so the statues had largely been left untouched.

Preface to 2001, under the Taliban

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 worshipped, 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."

Afghanistan's radical clerics began 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.

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 against Islam," said Jamal.

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. A statement issued by the ministry of religious affairs of Taliban regime justified the destruction as being in accordance with Islamic law. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would later condemn the destruction as "savage".

Dynamiting and destruction, March 2001

The statues were destroyed by dynamite over several weeks, starting in early March, carried out in different stages. Initially, the statues were fired at for several days using anti-aircraft guns and artillery. This damaged them, but did not obliterate them. Later, the Taliban placed anti-tank mines at the bottom of the niches, so that when fragments of rock broke off from artillery fire, the statues would receive additional destruction from particles that set off the mines. In the end, the Taliban lowered men down the cliff face and placed explosives into holes in the Buddhas.

On 6 March 2001 The 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 changed his position from being in favor of the statues to being against them. During a 13 March interview for Japan's Mainichi Shimbun, Afghan Foreign 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 18 March, The New York Times reported 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. The report 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, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, said that the destruction of the statues was carried out by the Head Council of Scholars after a single Swedish monuments expert proposed to restore the statues' heads. 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".

Aftermath of the destruction

The Taliban government decreed that the statues, which had survived 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 simple 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.

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.

Developments since 2002

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.

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 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 June 2012.

In September 2005, Mawlawi Mohammed Islam Mohammadi, Taliban governor of Bamyan province at the time of the destruction and widely seen as responsible for its occurrence, was elected to the Afghan Parliament. On 26 January 2007, he was gunned down in Kabul.

Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei made a 95-minute documentary entitled The Giant Buddhas (released in March 2006) on the statues, the international reactions to their destruction, 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.

In the summer of 2006, Afghan officials were 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.

The Buddhist remnants at Bamyan were included on the 2008 World Monuments Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites by the World Monuments Fund. It is hoped that the listing will put continued national and international attention on the site in order to ensure its long-term preservation, and to make certain that future restoration efforts maintain the authenticity of the site and that proper preservation practices are followed.

Oil painting discovery

After the destruction of the Buddhas, 50 caves were revealed. In 12 of the caves wall paintings were discovered. In December 2004, Japanese researchers discovered that the wall paintings at Bamyan were actually painted between the fifth and the ninth centuries, rather than the sixth to eighth centuries as previously believed. The discovery was made by analysing radioactive isotopes contained in straw fibers found beneath the paintings. It is believed that the paintings were done by artists travelling on the Silk Road, the trade route between China and the West.

Scientists from the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Tokyo (Japan), the Centre of Research and Restoration of the French Museums-CNRS (France), the Getty Conservation Institute (United States) and the ESRF (the European Synchrotron radiation facility) in Grenoble analysed samples from the paintings, typically less than 1 mm across. They discovered that the paint contained pigments such as vermilion (red mercury sulfide) and lead white (lead carbonate). These were mixed with a range of binders, including natural resins, gums (possibly animal skin glue or egg) and oils, probably derived from walnuts or poppies. Specifically, researchers identified drying oils from murals showing Buddhas in vermilion robes sitting cross-legged amid palm leaves and mythical creatures as being painted in the middle of the 7th century. It is believed that they are the oldest known surviving examples of oil painting, possibly predating oil painting in Europe by as much as six centuries. The discovery may lead to a reassessment of works in ancient ruins in Iran, China, Pakistan, Turkey and India.

Some have cautioned that the oils may in fact be contamination from fingers, as the touching of the painting is encouraged in Buddhist tradition; however, analysis by spectroscopy and chromatography indicates an unambiguous signal for the use of oils rather than any other contaminant. In addition oils were discovered underneath other layers of paint, negating the presence of surface contaminants.

Another giant statue unearthed

On 8 September 2008 archeologists searching for the fabled 300 meter statue at the site of the already dynamited Buddhas announced the discovery of a new 19-meter-long (62 ft) "sleeping Buddha", the pose known to Buddhists as the scene where the Buddha passed into nirvana. This discovery may have confirmed the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang's mention of a large Buddha in a sleeping posture in this area, which were recorded by Xuanzang one thousand four hundred years ago.

References

Further reading

• Fabio Maniscalco, World Heritage and War, monographic series "Mediterraneum", vol. 6, Naples 2007, Massa Publisher [2]
• Japanese researchers make breakthrough on destroyed Bamyan paintings. Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, 2004-12-11.
• Wriggins, Sally Hovey. Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996
• Theosophical website with pictures
• Buddhas of Bamyan and more photographs from Afghanistan
• Artist to recreate Afghan Buddhas. BBC News, 9 August 2005.
• "The Giant Buddhas" trilingual site (English, Deutsch, Français) - a film about the destruction of the giant statues. By Christian Frei, Switzerland (2005).
• The Giant Buddhas at IMDb
• "World appeals to Taleban to stop destroying statues". CNN, 3 March 2001. (New York)
• http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/apr/12inter.htm
• Pakistani, Saudi engineers helped destroy BuddhasDaily Times, Sunday, 19 March 2006.
• "Afghan who had statues destroyed killed", Associated Press, 26 January 2007.
• Gall, Carlotta. "Afghans consider rebuilding Bamyan Buddhas", Herald Tribune, 5 December 2006.
• Harding, Luke. " How the Buddha got his wounds ", The Guardian, 3 March 2001.
• Kassaimah, Sahar. "Afghani Ambassador Speaks At USC", IslamOnline, 12 March 2001.
• Cloonan, Michele V. "The Paradox of Preservation", Library Trends, Summer 2007.
• List Of Colossal Sculpture In Situ

External links

• News articles about the Buddhas of Bamyan
• Photos of the Buddhas of Bamyan
• Bamyan Afghanistan Laser Project
• World Heritage Tour: 360 degree image (after destruction)
• Bamyan Development Community Portal for cultural heritage management of Bamyan
• The World Monuments Fund's Watch List 2008 listing for Bamyan
• Historic Footage of Bamyan Statues, circa 1973