Word: buddha
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...Buddha's army rises to save the suffering...
...theory has it that the reclining statue may be entombed within the actual mountainside, in a long chamber whose entrances were sealed up long ago, when the first Islamic invaders swept into the valley. But most archaeologists believe that the Buddha was out in the open and later buried either by an earthquake or the crumbling sandstone cliff above it. Either way, it has apparently been saved from the Taliban's predations centuries later. Jean-FranCois Jarrige, director of the Guimet Museum of Asiatic Art in Paris, was in Bamiyan recently, walking gingerly along a path cleared in the minefield...
...pilgrim Xuanzang, usually an exacting chronicler, is maddeningly vague about the reclining Buddha's specific location. Reading his account and others of the same period, scholars are certain that the statue lies between the niches of the two destroyed Buddhas, a distance of nearly 800 meters. The last recorded sighting of the reclining Buddha, according to Paiman, was by a 10th century Indian historian. After that, the gigantic Buddha seems to have vanished as if by a magician's conjuring trick...
...high on the Kabul government's list of priorities. But this week, the U.N. is sponsoring a meeting in Kabul of archaeologists, scholars and possible donor nations to repair the country's war-shattered culture, starting in Bamiyan. Experts say that to restore one of the standing Buddhas could amount to $50 million. A dig for the reclining Buddha would cost a fraction of that...
...Hussain would like to see all three Buddhas reunited. As a kid, he scampered around the hermit caves, and lazed with his friends on top of the biggest Buddha, admiring the lapis and gold rimmed frescoes of the ancient monks?and seeing his own Asiatic features mirrored in their faces. "The people who made these Buddhas looked like Hazaras," says Hussain. "That's why the Taliban hated them so much." Forced to help destroy the two standing statues, Hussain says he's ready to find their sleeping companion. If he succeeds, Bamiyan's Buddhas can perhaps finally rest in peace...