Mystery of the third Buddha
Letter From Afghanistan
BAMIAN--The light here still feels holy. It bathes the valley once populated by more than a thousand worshiping monks, living in caves carved into the mountainside. It fills the tall alcoves where two giant Buddhas once stood, one in a blue cloak and one in red, their faces and hands sparkling with gold. Today, the light catches only the outline of something great etched in the rust-colored sandstone, and pigeons flap across an empty space.
But now there is a new hope a so-called third Buddha. That is the talk of a town still reeling from the Taliban demolition of its two cultural treasures. It is a miracle hidden underground, the locals say, that will bring back the glory days when the Bamian valley bustled with Silk Road traders and reverent pilgrims.
Ancient tales. Hussein Dad smiles shyly as he relates the local legend, standing outside his tiny cave with a burned black ceiling. His home is one of the hundreds of cavities dotting the cliffs, used as monastic cells in ancient times. "We have heard a lot that between the two Buddhas that were destroyed, there is another Buddha under the ground that they could not destroy," he says. "I first heard about it when I was little, but in recent days everyone talks about it."
It is a story that has been told for generations in this town, that somewhere between the two standing Buddhas lies a reclining third. Its existence is also mentioned in the memoirs of a Chinese monk who traveled to Bamian in the seventh century, as well as in a Persian text from the 18th century. So why the sudden interest? Authorities in Bamian chalk it up to post-Taliban optimism. "It is because the other two Buddhas are destroyed, so people are all talking about this third Buddha," says Bamian Province Gov. Karim Khalili.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization tells a different story, with considerably less enthusiasm. UNESCO officials attribute the buzz to a man named Bernard Henrilevi, who traveled to Afghanistan over the past few weeks as a cultural envoy for the French president and prime minister. During his visit to Bamian, Khalili told him the story of the third Buddha, which Henrilevi repeated in a radio broadcast back in Kabul. "It was not until after Henrilevi gave his speech on Kabul Radio that we started getting reports from the area that there were people doing illegal excavations," says a UNESCO cultural adviser in Kabul. "It was extremely irresponsible."
Abdullah Nuri scrambles over the hillside between the two Buddha niches, an area that has become pockmarked with small ditches made by illegal excavators. An elfin man in an oversize green jacket, Nuri leads a team of 12 ex-bodyguards for the governor, all now on Buddha detail. Though his job is to keep locals from illegally digging for the third Buddha, he confesses that he would not mind finding it himself.
Nuri darts into a grotto with a perfectly round ceiling and points up at the faint traces of blue and white paint. "Four years ago, I saw a painting there of a seated woman at a party. Now it is gone," he says. "The civilization of Bamian 1,500 years ago was better than it is now. In all the pictures the people were having parties, drinking and having a good time. If we found the third Buddha, it would be a very big help in returning Bamian to its original state, because people will come from all over the world to see it."
It is also the local people's last hope for reclaiming a bit of history. Omarakhan Massoudi, director of the Kabul museum, says he is "100 percent sure" that the statue exists and that the only reason the authorities did not try excavating it in the pre-Soviet era is because they did not have enough money. Now, though, they are thankful for that. "This Buddha was saved by accident," says archaeologist Mohammed Rasuli, who worked with Massoudi in the 1970s and has now rejoined the museum. "If we had excavated it, they would have destroyed it, too. We are lucky we did not excavate it at the time."
At the foot of the pile of rubble where the larger Buddha once stood, there is some black graffiti scrawled by the Taliban "Allah says he likes the things that are right and hates the wrong." Hussein Dad was here when the smashed bits of the Buddha came falling down, almost exactly one year ago. "I felt they were destroying our country, destroying our history," he says.
Even if the third Buddha is not excavated in his lifetime, he will pass his hope to future generations. "My children are still young, but I have told them this story. Just as our fathers and grandfathers told us, so we tell them."
This story appears in the April 1, 2002 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.