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A 1600 year old statue of a
sleeping Buddha - uncovered by archeologists from the
former Soviet Union 35 years ago and never before seen by
the outside world - will soon be on display in Dushanbe,
the capital of the Central Asian Republic of Tajikistan.
After Afghanistan’s Taliban destroyed the largest
Buddhas in Central Asia, the newly unveiled Tajikistan
Buddha, which dates back to the 5th century AD,
will be the largest ancient Buddha statue in Central Asia.
The 14 meter long Tajik
Buddha was first excavated by archeologists from the
former Soviet Union in 1966, from a vast Buddhist
monastery complex in Ajina Tepa in southern Tajikistan.
Ajina Tepa was on the ancient Silk Route connecting both
China with Europe and Central Asia with the Indian
seaports. Instead of publicizing their enormous find, the
Soviets excavated the Buddha only to hide it.
Bringing the Buddha to
light has been the lifetime task of Dr. Babamulloev
Saidmurad, the newly appointed Director of Tajikistan’s
Museum of National Antiquities which will officially open
in August. ‘’The Soviets tried to tell the Tajiks that
they had no history before the 1917 Russian Revolution
even though the Tajiks are the most ancient race in
Central Asia,’’ says Saidmurad. He says smaller
Buddhist statues and murals were shipped to the Hermitage
Museum in St. Petersburg and hidden away in its vaults,
but the Tajikistan Buddha was too big to move and was
buried in the basement of a Dushanbe museum.
‘’The Soviets never
allowed Tajikistan to show its pre-Islamic and Islamic
archeological collections,‘’ says Frederick Roussel of
Acted, a leading French non-governmental organization in
Central Asia, which funded the restoration of the Bhudda.
Nine months ago Acted paid for a Russian archeological
expert to come from the Hermitage Museum to spend three
months putting together the puzzle of the Buddha.
‘’The Buddha was in 100
pieces stored in boxes in the basement of the museum and
it had to be put together like a huge jigsaw,’’ says
Saidmurad. ‘’We worked like demons around the clock
for six months.’’ The Buddha lies on his side, his
face showing absolute serenity reflecting the nearness of
nirvana in the last moments before his death. Around the
base of the sleeping Bhudda and on the walls of the
monastery were more than one thousand paintings in bright
colors depicting the life of Buddha, many of which were
sent to the Hermitage.
Some 300 kilometers north
of Bamiyan, Ajina Tepe was part of the widespread Buddhist
renaissance and culture in Central Asia and Xinjiang under
the Kushan kings. The Kushans were descended from a branch
of the Chinese Yueh-chih tribes that first invaded Central
Asia around 140 BC. The Kushans created their empire in
the first century AD uniting a vast land area stretching
from southern Pakistan and western Iran to Afghanistan,
Central Asia, and Xinjiang. In the second century AD, the
great Kushan king Kanishka, who extended the empire to
India, was a major patron of the Mahayana school of
Buddhism, the first to humanize the figure of Buddha.
Previously Buddha had only been depicted by symbols such
as the prayer wheel. Although the Kushans later broke up
into smaller kingdoms, they continued their dominance of
the region until the 6th century AD.
In March the Taliban
dynamited two soaring statues of Buddha cut into limestone
cliffs of the Hindu Kush mountains in Bamiyan, in the
Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan. The larger
Buddha, which stood at 57 meters, was the largest standing
Buddha in the world and was carved between 300-400 AD. The
Taliban rejected numerous international appeals including
strong protests by the Buddhist countries of south east
Asia.
‘’I did not sleep the
whole night when I heard that the Taliban had destroyed
the Bamiyan Buddhas, but it only moved us to work harder
to restore our Buddha which is now the largest in Central
Asia,’’ says Saidmurad. ‘’The Taliban have
destroyed not just Afghanistan’s history but also the
pre-Islamic cultural heritage of all Central Asia, because
the Bamiyan Buddhist civilization was the center for the
spread of Bhuddism in Central Asia and China,’’ says
Parveen Abdullova, an assistant to Saidmurad and a
prominent Tajik restorer and artist. ‘’The Buddhist
Ghandara civilization in Pakistan, Bamiyan in Afghanistan
and Kurgan Tepe in Tajikistan were all interlinked,’’
she added.
The first Tajiks heard of
their rediscovered Buddha was in mid-March when a local
newspaper ran a story headlined ‘’Tajikistan’s
Buddha is sleeping safely despite Taliban actions.’’
When Tajik President Imamali Rakhmanov opens the new
Museum in August, remarkable artifacts of Zoroastrianism
and Hinduism will also be on display. The Kushans allowed
all three religions to flourish side by side in their
empire. A 5th century statue shows the Hindu
god Shiva and his wife Parvetti sitting on a cow. The
statue is the largest artifact to date showing the spread
of Hinduism so far north into Central Asia, where it was
able to co-exist with Zoroastrianism and Buddhism.
The Zoroastrian finds are
remarkable in their own right: the Museum will have the
best collection of the 3,400-year-old Zoroastrian
civilization outside Iran. The Zoroastrians, or Parsees,
who still survive in small numbers in Iran and South and
Central Asia, developed a major center in Pendzhkent in
the western corner of southern Tajikistan close to the
border with Uzbekistan. Here, the ancient city of Zoras
included a vast temple complex and a developed urban
infrastructure, which the Soviets had excavated in the
1960s, but also refused to display. A few Zorastrians
still live in Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Bukhara in
Uzbekistan. Bukhara became the capital of Islamic Central
Asia, demonstrating the tolerance shown by all Muslim
rulers to other faiths in Central Asia.
A remarkable 5th
century carved wooden gate which was displayed at the
entrance to a Zoroastrian temple near Khodjent in northern
Tajikistan, excavated in 1957, gives incredible detail of
Zoroastrian history and mythology. According to Saidmurad,
the Persian poet Firdausi used the detail on this gate to
write his epic poem of Persian history the Shahnama.
The panel, which is charred with fire, shows the legendary
giant, Shah or King Zorak - a figure which abounds in
ancient carvings and paintings in Central Asia, Iran and
Afghanistan and is also the name of an abandoned mountain
and town close to Bamiyan. The town was destroyed by the
Mongols in 1220. There also paintings of Zohrak depicted
as a frightening demon. Another figure shows a bird-angel
with two heads.
Greek and Roman
civilization will also be represented when the Museum
opens. Early Kushan culture was heavily influenced by the
Greeks who invaded Central Asia under Alexander the Great
in 329 BC. Central Asia was then ruled by the Sogdians,
whom the Tajiks consider as their ancestors. After
defeating the Sogdians, Alexander married a Sogdian
princess Roxana from the city of Oratoba, which is close
to modern day Khodjent.
The discovery and
restoration of Tajikistan’s giant Buddha gives hope to
those who were distraught by the destruction of the
Bamiyan Buddhas. ‘’This Buddha is a most remarkable
discovery for the Buddhist world and the cultural heritage
of mankind, ‘’ says Hiroshi Takahashi, a former
Japanese and now UN diplomat in Dushanbe, who saw the
Buddha recently. ‘’There will be many people in Japan
and other countries who will be enormously interested in
coming to see this Buddha,’’ he added. Beset by years
of civil war, draught and economic misery, landlocked
Tajikistan badly needs a boost to attract foreign
investment and tourism. The opening of the new Museum in
August will clearly put Tajikistan on the map for devotees
of three major religions as well as lovers of ancient art
and history.
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