Posted on 08/06/2002 10:06:25 AM PDT by vannrox
Aug. 3, 2002, 6:52PM
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan -- When the Taliban blew up the two giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, people around the world gasped in outrage at the willful destruction of such a highly prized archaeological site.
But it appears the Taliban overlooked one giant Buddha.
Archeologists have long suspected that a third giant Buddha, a reclining Sleeping Buddha, is buried somewhere between the two destroyed Buddhas. Now, with the end of Taliban rule and the restoration of a measure of peace and stability across the country, the quest to find it is being revived.
This Buddha is believed to be far bigger than either of the two that were destroyed. No one knows precisely where it is, though some claim they have a pretty good idea. It may not have survived intact after languishing for many centuries beneath the debris of rocks and clay that accumulated at the foot of the cliff into which the Buddhas were carved.
But few doubt that there is, or at least was at some point in history, a third giant Buddha of Bamiyan.
"For sure we know there is a third Buddha. Everyone knows it exists," said Zafar Paiman, an Afghan archaeologist working for France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. "We don't know exactly where it is. But we know its position, a reclining position, and the approximate location."
The people of Bamiyan, most of them Shiite Hazaras, are also in no doubt about the third Buddha's existence.
"It's a fact among the people. This was something told to us by our fathers and grandfathers, that there is a Sleeping Buddha," said Hussein Mirza, who was raised in one of the caves carved into the cliff alongside the Buddhas and who was among those coerced by the Taliban into packing explosives around the site.
"It has its back to the mountain, its face to the city, its feet to the small Buddha, its head to the large Buddha," said Mirza, who didn't mention to the Taliban that they had missed a Buddha. "Because of earthquakes and dust and floods, it has been covered over. But if someone came to uncover it, it would make everyone very happy because the Buddhas are part of our history."
If another giant Buddha indeed were to rise from the debris of the Taliban's destruction, it would be powerfully symbolic, not only for Bamiyan but for Afghanistan as a whole as it struggles to emerge from five years of harsh Taliban rule. But the question of whether to look for it is mired in controversy.
The assumption that there is another giant Buddha is based on the journal of a seventh-century Chinese pilgrim, Hsuan-tsang, who described a Sleeping Buddha between the two upright Buddhas. He put its length at about 900 feet, five times the size of the larger of the two destroyed Buddhas.
The first tentative effort to find the Buddha was scheduled in 1977 by the Kabul-based Afghan Institute of Archaeology just a year before the Soviet invasion. Sensing that the country was sliding into war, the institute hastily abandoned the project and kept its plans under wraps, fearing that if word got out, looters would ravage the site.
Now that peace seems a real possibility, a team of archaeologists from France plans to embark on an exploration of the site in August, Paiman said. If they succeed in finding the Buddha, a full-scale excavation will be launched next year.
But many experts dispute the wisdom of digging for the third Buddha when so many questions remain over Afghanistan's future.
As long as it remains buried, at least the Buddha is safe, said Abdul Wasey Ferozi, director general of the Institute of Archaeology. If it is exposed, it will be vulnerable to looters.
And should another Islamic fundamentalist regime seize power in Afghanistan, the giant Buddha the Taliban failed to destroy would become a target.
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