Bamiyan Budda Statues in Afghanistan

About fourteen hundred years ago in the year 629, a young Chinese monk in his late twenties named Xuanzang (玄奘) started his pilgrimage from then Chinese capital city of Xi’an to India in search of sacred books of Buddhism. Journeyed through today’s western China, modern day Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, he then headed south and arrived at Bamiyan valley in modern day Afghanistan in the year 630. Located between the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia, Bamiyan was an important location close to one of the most important branches of the Silk Road.?Xuanzang saw in Bamiyan two impressive large Buddha’s carved out of the rockface.?After spending sixteen years visiting over a hundred different kingdoms, covering over ten thousand miles including various parts of modern day India to study Buddhism, he returned to China in the year 645. Other than dedicating the rest of his life to translate Buddhism scripts to Chinese, he also completed his book Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (大唐西域記) in 646, which has become one of the primary sources for the study of medieval Central Asia and India. Here is how he described the two Budda statues in his book with remarkable details:

“To the northeast of the city, there is at a corner of the mountains a rock statue of the Buddha standing, one hundred forty or fifty feet in height, a dazzling golden color and adorned with brilliant gems. To the east there is a monastery built by a previous king of the country. To the east of the monastery there is a copper statue of the Buddha standing, more than one hundred feet tall. It was cast in separate pieces and then welded together into shape.”

Based on modern carbon dating technique, the two Buddhas were believed to be constructed at about 570 and 618 respectively, at a time when the area was a site of pilgrimage and learning for Buddhists. The Bamiyan valley was a place where East met West and its archaeology reveals a blend of Greek, Turkic, Persian, Chinese and Indian influence. Artisans in the region were influenced by the Greek civilization that was established hundreds of years earlier in northern Afghanistan by Alexander the Great.?The description by Xuanzang was the earliest written record of the two Bamiyan Buddha statues. The two statures stood there for more than fourteen centuries and survived through invasions including Arab, Mongol, Timur, witnessed the British forces at least three times and subsequently the Soviet Union. They became cultural icons for generations of Bamiyan or Afghanistan people.

To the horror of the world in March 2001, Taliban forces, using anti-aircraft guns and anti-tank mines, completely demolished the two Bamiyan Buddhas. Some say it was motivated by religious belief, others say it was a disdain of western money being used for protecting the statues. Either way, it was a deliberate act which destroyed something invaluable which had stood there for over 1400 years for the Afghanistan people.

As a belated attempt for preservation, UNESCO declared in 2003 the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley be on the UNESCO's World Heritage List and List in Danger. There is still no consensus if and how the statues could be recreated in some way. Obviously there are many cultural or historical considerations of rebuilding something which would be of completely different cultural or historical value.

In June 2015, A husband and wife duo of Chinese film makers, Zhang Xinyu and Liang Hong, using relics-friendly 3-D light projection technology, were able to virtually recreate the iconic statues for two days into the now empty niches where they once stood (cover photo). The recreation, however temporary, brought dances, cheers and smiles on people's face in Bamiyan, including many children who had never seen the Buddhas before their destruction. The Afghanistan people have suffered through uninterrupted wars and destruction for centuries, let’s all pray for them and hope history does not repeat itself with the recent turn of events. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”

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