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Posted: 24 Sep 2023

Taken: 24 Sep 2023

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Buddha Buddha

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The Buddhas of Bamiyan in 1832

The Buddhas of Bamiyan in 1832
youtu.be/VXXmcGirPMA?si=DVLqcy9SXMYYI2lt
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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Mason had been hearing stories of Bamiyan for years. Only a handful of western travellers had ever set eyes on it, but they brought back tales of impossible things: a ruined city, perched atop a hill. Gigantic statues, carved into the cliffs, faceless and ancient. No one knew who had built them, or what they represented: could they be gods, or long lost kings?. . . Page 48

No one at the time knew that the Buddhas of Bamiyan were actually Buddhas. Afghanistan had been one of the greatest centers of Buddhist worship and culture in the world: monasteries clung to the mountainsides and its plains were dotted with stupas, sites of prayer and meditation. More than a thousand monks had once lived and worshipped in Bamiyan, some in monasteries along the valley floor, and others living as hermits in the cliffs. So many hermits converged on Bamiyan that their caves – ‘called samootch by the people’ – stacked up, one on top of the another, in the cliff-faces.

The gigantic buddhas were almost 1,500 years old. The smaller Buddha, 115 feet tall, was constructed in the middle of the sixth century A.D. The larger Buddha, which stood even taller, at 174 feet, joined it around a half century later. The Buddhas did not mark a serene pilgrimage site on the edges of the known world: Bamiyan was, at the time, a riotous stop on the Silk Road. the Buddhas were painted in wild, vivid colours; incandescent red for the larger and blinding white for the smaller. So richly and brightly were they decorated that the Chinese traveller Xuanzang thought one of them was made entirely of brass.

But Buddhism had been swept out of Afghanistan in the wake of the Islamic conquest of the region. Not even the stories remained. ~ Page 54

KINGS SHADOW - THE LOST CITY OF ALEXANDRIA
13 months ago. Edited 4 months ago.
 grobi358
grobi358 club
Eine sehr beeindruckende Geschichte und ein sehr interessantes Bild!
13 months ago.

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