Find stirs Sleeping Buddha talk

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan -- French archeologists searching for the colossal Sleeping Buddha in Bamiyan province have uncovered what could be the long-missing statue's foot, raising hopes of a major new discovery from Afghanistan's ancient Buddhist past.

Ever since the fundamentalist Taliban destroyed Bamiyan's 1,500-year-old Standing Buddhas in 2001 because they were "un-Islamic," attention has been focused on the hunt for the much larger Sleeping Buddha, described in the travel diary of the seventh-century Chinese monk Xuan Zang and depicted in cave paintings at the historic site in the Hindu Kush mountains west of Kabul.

Two years ago, a French team led by the Afghan-born archeologist Zemaryali Tarzi of Strasbourg University began excavations for the 985-foot-long reclining statue representing the Buddha in a state of "Mahapari nirvana," or ultimate enlightenment.

The dig finally may have yielded something promising.

"Professor Tarzi has found a structure which has still to be properly identified but which could be part of the foot of the Sleeping Buddha, maybe the toe," said Masanori Nagaoka, UNESCO's Kabul-based culture consultant.

"Alternatively, the structure could be the platform on which the giant statue reclined," he added.

The discovery just east of the site of the razed Buddhas has generated considerable excitement among the foreign experts working in the Bamiyan Valley.

"Along with this intriguing find, Professor Tarzi has excavated 11 fragments from smaller sculptures, including half-a-dozen heads and a torso," said Edmund Melzl, a German restorer with the International Council on Monuments and Sites.

"The torso still has some color on it," Mr. Melzl added. This is considered highly significant, because so few artifacts survive from Bamiyan's Buddhist past.

While the French have been digging, German specialists have been cataloguing and conserving the brittle debris from the destroyed 180-foot and 125-foot Standing Buddhas.