[Buddha-l] New Bamiyan Buddha found amid destruction

[S.A. Feite]

New Bamiyan Buddha find amid destruction
by Danny Kemp and Sardar AhmadSun Nov 9, 12:39 am ET
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."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081109/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanarchaeologybuddhismunrest_081109053934