The Lost Lands of Buddhist Belief

Renuka Narayanan, Hindustan Times, Nov. 17, 2012; Wisdom Quarterly

French archaeological team on top of giant 4th century Buddhist stupa cut into mountain in Samangan province, Afghanistan, 2006. A historic site to the south and east is Mes Aynak now at risk from mining (John Moore/Getty Images).

 

Gandhara became Pakistan and Afghanistan

In today's religiously riven landscape, it's hard to imagine how Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Islam, Sikhism, and Christianity took turns to water the land, each to its own degree. Of these, perhaps we know the least about Buddhism, because it originated so very long ago.

But around CE (Common Era) 406, it was recorded that there were 3,000 monastics of the Theravada school in Bannu at the Northwest Frontier of India [modern Afghanistan/Pakistan, ancient Gandhara]. 

 

In Peshawar, the grand pagoda built by Kanishka was so impressive that the opinion was, "Of the various pagodas in the inhabited world, this one takes the highest rank."

 

In the Punjab proper, across the river Indus, lay a region called Bhida where Buddhism flourished. 

 

The local people were very touched to see foreign Buddhists [from the West] and looked after them with great care and affection as the Buddha himself would have wished. Across the Land of Five Rivers, there were many monasteries with nearly 10,000 monks and nuns.

• Saving the Buddhas of Mes Aynak, Afghanistan

In Vrajamandal at Mathura, there were 20 monasteries on the banks of the Yamuna river. It was also observed that, "All the kings of the countries to the west of the desert [where the Buddha was born] are firm believers."

Buddhism began in India but Siddhartha came from the northwestern frontier (pakistaniat)

 

While everyday people gave utmost respect to Buddhist monastics, the monastics occupied themselves with "benevolent ministrations and with chanting liturgies, or sitting in meditation."

When wandering monastics arrived, they were welcomed at these monasteries with water, oil, and "the liquid food allowed after hours" and given rooms to rest in. More

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"Lost Treasures of Afghanistan" (video)

National Geographic; Wisdom Quarterly

During Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s, the National Museum outside [the capital] Kabul was literally on the front line, repeatedly attacked by rocket fire and looted by [CIA-inspired] warlords.
   
Then, during the reign of the fundamentalist [CIA-created] Taliban regime, all non-Islamic statues and tombs were ordered destroyed. This led to the loss of two-thirds of the hundred thousand items in the Kabul museum.

      
In search of a larger reclining Afghan Buddha statue than the ones destroyed (Nat Geo)

  

The Taliban was forced from Kabul after the U.S. military [illegally invaded in a preemptively strike and] intervention in Afghanistan in late 2001. Before then, the Taliban's culture minister supervised the destruction of many of the remaining exhibits at the museum.

 
What the Taliban didn't know was that many of the most magnificent objects had already been spirited away. More than 25 years ago museum staff had hidden the treasures as the bombs started to fall. (See photos of the Afghanistan museum treasures.)...

 

Bactrian Gold

Indian gold coins (coinindia.com)

Although virtually unknown to the world public, Afghanistan's cultural heritage is one of the world's richest. Afghanistan was for a long time a cultural crossroads. The lost treasure represents a Silk Road melting pot of precious objects from China, India, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and ancient Afghanistan. 

  

Perhaps the most important of the lost treasures were the famed Bactrian gold pieces, great icons of Afghanistan's cultural heritage. The hoard -- discovered in the fall of 1978 by Soviet archaeologists -- included more than 20,000 gold objects from the 2,000-year-old Silk Road culture of Bactria, an ancient nation that covered parts of what is now Afghanistan. More

• Real history of Afghanistan (Invisible History) 
• World's Greatest Buddhist site: Mes Aynak
• Spectacular Bandi Amir (lake) of Bamiyan
• Afghanistan: Profile and Photo Gallery
• Ancient Assyrian Treasures Found Intact in Baghdad
• Lost Iraq Treasures: Rare Geographic Photos
• How They Found National Geographic's "Afghan Girl"
• PHOTO GALLERY: National Geographic 

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Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan (new photos)

James Gordon, Los Angeles (photos); text Seven; graphic design CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan -- which the maverick scholar and historian Ranajit Pal, Ph.D. considers to be in vicinity of the original Kapilavastu, where Siddhartha grew up -- is ancient land in Himalayan foothills.

 

Buddhism is steeped in the geography of ancient Greater India (Maha Bharat), which at the time of the Buddha was a collection of loosely aligned territories. There are relics and markers throughout the region (many now outside the country) including ancient northwest Gandhara, present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

   

Note people on foot. The tallest of the Buddhas of Bamiyan may not be the biggest in Asia.

  

India, and its Shakyan neighbor in the northwest, was expansive and fluid. People were aligned with extended family clans, and united by commonalities in language and trade. Buddhism and its precursor "wandering ascetic" (shramana) tradition are found even in the preceding Harappan era along with much of the history the Buddha mentioned, which we can assume was from the Indus Valley Civilization and earlier.

  

Bamiyan valley looking north to snow capped Himalayan range of Koh-i-Baba/Hindu Kush

  

Buddhas are spoken of as having arisen in previous aeons, far earlier than modern archeology is willing to concede that modern humans existed. But another maverick historian and archeologist shows evidence of the great antiquity of humanity (and hybrids) on this planet: Michael Cremo, who is informed not only by science but the ancient Vedas as well, as humans have been devolving through the ages.

  

The area of Bamiyan in Central Asia was Zoroastrian, founded by the asura Zoroaster (Zarathustra), and Buddhist at one time, that is, whatever fragments or memories remained of pre-Shakyamuni buddhas. before Gotama which implies that Buddhism was as old as Zoroastrianism. Dr. Pal contends that "detailed study reveals close links of early Buddhism with Hinduism, Judaism and Zoroastrianism which rose in the Bamiyan-Baluchistan-Gandhara area." 

   

The viewing point over Bamiyan valley from within the head of the tallest Buddha statue

  

(Holger Kersten is an excellent resource for information on ancient Jewish outposts in India). "The crucial fact that the Silk Road passed through the Buddhist heartland has escaped the notice of all," Dr. Pal explains. This is how Buddhism spread, even as the Buddha Gautama went back and forth from his native Kapilavastu to the ancient central kingdom of India, Magadha, where he otherwise spent much of his time teaching. He early on sent enlightened missionaries in all directions to spread the Dharma. They must have reached at least as far as Kalmykia, in indigenously Buddhist Europe.

  

Band-e Amir Bahar, west of and within two miles of the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan

  

Lumbini (Siddhartha's garden birthplace) or Kapilavastu (his hometown) in Nepal is, Dr. Pal contends, an archeological and historical "fraud." Wisdom Quarterly much to the chagrin of the governments of Islamic Afghanistan and Hindu-dominated Nepal and India. (Nepal was once the only Hindu nation in the world; India never was; they both now lean secular with a great financial interest in Buddhist tourism and history). Dr. Pal points out that, "Nothing in the art, archaeology, history or literature of early Nepal has the faintest hint of Buddhism." More photos

  

Shakya -- Siddhartha's clan name -- means "grey earth," a strange feature of Afghanistan.

Reassembling the Bamiyan fragments after the CIA/Taliban's destruction

• The Buddhas as Wonders of Bamiyan
• Searching for the Buddha's maternal home
• Afghanistan copper mining will crush Afghan site
• The Buddha's words can douse rancor and discord
• The REAL Invisible History of Afghanistan
• Deciding between heritage and hard cash in Afghanistan
• VIDEO:  Monk from Buddhist mission to Ladakh honored
• PHOTOS: Bhutan, Buddhist Land Beyond Heaven and Earth

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