Word: xuanzang
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...astride a portion of the old Silk Road, the ancient highway that transported riches between the east and west. Indeed, the Jehanabad Buddha looks out over a stretch of the old path. Later, in the 7th century, Swat Valley was the birthplace of Tantric Buddhism, and Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang described the valley as home to hundreds of Buddhist sculptures, monasteries and stupas. Only a fraction has been excavated...
Taxila should be a showcase of that civilization. Today a town about 20 miles northwest of Islamabad, it was a center of Buddhist learning, a must-visit for travelers like Xuanzang seeking Buddhist scripture and wisdom. Formerly part of the Persian Empire, Taxila was one of Alexander's conquests and is today a World Heritage Site. The museum there, started in 1918, is one of Pakistan's finest, with more than 4,000 artifacts from the Gandhara civilization. But no one comes to visit much anymore. Nasir Khan says there have been warnings of a possible attack on the museum...
...country has always been at a crossroads of civilizations. The Silk Road provided a vector for Buddhism to come from the east, while Hellenistic and even Egyptian influences flowed the other way. Alexander the Great's eastward conquest essentially ended there in the 4th century B.C., and Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang passed through in the 7th century A.D. on his quest for Buddhist texts. "Amsterdam, Berlin and London today are the Afghanistan of 2,000 years ago," says Khalid Siddiqi, a former Afghan refugee who is on the advisory committee for the exhibit. "It was a crucible of different cultures that...
...that a third Buddha exists in Bamiyan?and that it escaped the Taliban's idol-busting spree. It's a whopper; this Buddha is believed to measure up to 200 m long (the upright ones were just 55 m and 38 m high). According to meticulous records kept by Xuanzang, a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim who trekked to Bamiyan in the 7th century, the Buddha is shown reclining?and dying; freed from his body, he achieves nirvana, or enlightenment...
...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...