Traces of Buddhist Afghanistan

Building Buddhist temples is an issue in the New World; un-building one is an issue in the Old World. Archeologists in Afghanistan are racing to excavate, catalog and preserve the ruins of a Buddhist temple, stupas, statues, and other artifacts at Mes Aynak, about 40 kilometers southeast of Kabul. They are racing, because in three years the site is scheduled to be destroyed to make way for a Chinese-run copper mine.

Two millennia ago, Mes Aynak was part of a flourishing, cosmopolitan civilization called Gandhara that was ruled by Buddhist kings. In the late 1990s, it was an al Qaeda training camp. Did the terrorists-in-training know about the Buddhist treasures beneath their feet?

I learned about the archhological dig in an article in the Wall Street Journal, "Rescuing Afghanistan's Buddhist History," by Ann Marlowe. I learned elsewhere that archeologists had identified Mes Aynak as a site of interest, so to speak, at least 40 years ago. Excavation began only recently, however, even though the ruins are considered equal in importance to the ruined giant Buddhas of Bamiyan. Marlowe writes that "statue after statue of Buddhas and donors," most dating from the 4th and 5th centuries, are being uncovered.

Temple and stupa building at Mes Aynak may have begun as early as the 1st century. Mes Aynak would have been within the kingdom of Gandhara, ruled at that time by Kushans, an Indo-European people. At the peak of their influence, the Kushans ruled part of present-day Uzbekistan as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan and as far east as Benares. The Kushans controlled a critical portion of the Silk Road and had a port on the Arab sea.

So, Kushan Gandhara was a genuine crossroads, a place where many cultures -- Greek, Persian, Indian, and many others -- blended together. The kingdom's mercantile wealth supported scholarship and the arts. Buddhism had reached Afghanistan a few centuries earlier, during the time of Ashoka the Great. But it was during the Kushan period that the Buddhist artists of Gandhara created some of their most beautiful work. It's possible the dig at Mes Aynak will uncover some genuine masterpieces.

The plan is to document the site and remove smaller statues and stupas for presevation before the Chinese copper mining operation destroys it. Most of the ruins are mudbrick and schist, and cannot be moved, Marlowe writes.

I want to note also that it's an all-Afghan, and I assume all-Muslim, crew working to save as much as possible. Recently when I've written in defense of the building of mosques, I get reminders about the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas. We should appreciate that Muslims have also worked to preserve the Buddhist art and artifacts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.