Sleeping Buddha could fill this void

Two years ago, a French team led by the Afghan-born archaeologist Zemaryali Tarzi of Strasbourg University began excavations for the 300-metre-long reclining statue representing the Buddha in a state of Mahaparinirvana, or ultimate enlightenment. The dig may have finally yielded something promising.

‘‘Prof Tarzi has found a structure which has still to be properly identified but which could be part of the foot of the Sleeping Buddha, maybe the toe,’’ said Unesco’s Kabul-based culture consultant Masanori Nagaoka.

‘‘Alternatively, the structure could be the platform on which the giant statue reclined,’’ he added.

The discovery just east of the site of the razed Buddhas, where the Mahaparinirvana Buddha was located along with a monastery dedicated to it—according to Xuan Zang—has generated considerable excitement among the international missions working in Bamyan Valley.

‘‘Along with this intriguing find, Prof Tarzi has excavated 11 fragments from smaller sculptures, including half a dozen heads and a torso,’’ said Edmund Melzl, a German restorer with the International Council on Monuments and Sites.

‘‘The torso still has some colour on it,’’ he added.

This itself is highly significant, since so few artifacts survive from Bamyan’s Buddhist past. While the French have been digging, German specialists have been cataloguing and conserving the brittle debris from the destroyed 55-metre and 38-metre standing Buddhas.

Sadly, the destruction by the Taliban was so thorough that it is impossible to consider recreating the statues from the fragments.

An Italian group is in charge of reinforcing the two empty niches where the imposing stone statues stood, while Japanese experts are restoring and preserving the 13-odd surviving mural paintings in a few of the over 1,000 caves along Bamyan’s magnificent, camel-coloured cliffside.

With snow enveloping Bamyan last week, all the missions have packed up for winter and will return next year.

Meanwhile, a controversy is brewing. The people of Bamyan, Shia Hazaras, who suffered terribly under Taliban rule, have been demanding the rebuilding of the standing Buddhas. But the project could cost around US$ 50 mn, which some regard as a criminal waste in the country’s impoverished central highlands.

Prof Tarzi has suggested that instead of rebuilding the Buddhas at great cost, a hologram of the statues should be projected into the niches.

But if his mission to uncover the third colossal Buddha is successful, then Bamyan could once again become a major destination for pilgrims and tourists.

The scale of the Sleeping Buddha, probably built in the second half of the 6th Century when Bamyan was a major commercial and pilgrim centre, is mind-boggling.

It would have been the length of three football fields, or the same size as the Eiffel Tower placed horizontally, with the Buddha’s shoulder soaring at least 25 metres high. It is for this reason that experts believe the Sleeping Buddha would have been made not out of stone, but with mud bricks, material which would have been much highly susceptible to decay and damage by nature and man.

The destruction would have speeded up especially after iconoclastic Islam replaced Buddhism in the Bamyan Valley.

‘‘Following the Muslim invasion in 977 AD, many of the bricks from the Sleeping Buddha could well have been used for building houses,’’ said Melzl. ‘‘Now we must wait and see if Prof Tarzi’s excavations lead to the discovery of at least some portions of the massive, reclining statue which may still be buried underground,’’ he added.