October 17, 2005

Remember those Buddhas the Taliban blew up in 2001? A swiss dude called Paul Bucherer has a plan to rebuild the Buddhas of Bamiyan and has already raised over 1 million pounds to this end. The Buddhas, over 2000 years old, are said to have been built by craftsmen who came to the region with Alexander the great, and were an important Buddhist pilgrimage site when Genghis Khan conquered asia.
posted by calimehtar 18 years ago
  • okay, so maybe this was posted already as a comment in this post... or maybe not since the page seems to have been moved. Anyway, I gotta start checking for double-posts I guess.
  • Not sure how I feel about this. As an 1800 year old artifact, they were significant. As a place in Afganistan to spend a million pounds? I dunno. I'm not convinced that reproductions would be worth the cost and effort. Perhaps we can just have replicas built on the strip in Vegas and be done with it.
  • Yo, Swiss Dude: Better wait for the region to restabilise unless you fancy being a target for any and all religious maniacs with Semtex down their trousers, and ending up staring at £1,000,000 worth of rubble.
  • I'm not sure that it's Afghanistan's money that's going to pay for the reconstructions. But, if the money were donated to good causes there it might do more good. It was heartbreaking when the statues were ravaged, but how much of a Buddhist presence is there now? A quick Google search didn't indicate that there is any, so might the Afghanis see this as a waste?
  • It's weird how the destruction of (admittedly beautiful and historic) old stone statues can get folks worked up whereas they won't cough up a dollar for a person who lives nearby.
  • Squidranch, assuming when you say "cough up a dollar for a person who lives nearby" you mean give money to beggars, I can explain it. It's because I want to use my money to encourage behaviour I like. I don't give money to panhandlers the same way I don't feed pigeons - it's not that I want them all to die, I just want them to find a way to support themselves that adds to, or at least doesn't detract from, the community. I think this project meets those criteria, besides employing Afghani craftsmen, and western Art Historians and Scientists (God knows they could all use the work) he's making a statement for beauty and against human destructiveness. And MCroft, if they can do it on the Vegas Strip then why not in Afghanistan? If it's well-executed and sincere it'll do proportionately more good in Afghanistan, I would argue, than in Vegas where the impact would be lost among the lights and scale recreations of a million other landmarks already there.
  • Calimehtar: Why do it at all? It doesn't serve the preservationists who were interested in the ancient art, and it doesn't serve the non-existant Buddhists of Afghanistan. The Vegas strip is closer to the approximately 1 million Buddhists in the US, it's possible to get relatively cheap flights and lodging, craftspeople are available, and doing so would at least expose the commercial/tourist nature of the project.
  • Couldn't they just give the money to create schools so the next generation of Afghanis wouldn't blow up their own history? The word I heard used most in reference to these Buddha's was 'irreplacable'. Making replicas of them is an expensive joke. It's hard to internalize this 'statement of beauty' when one is living in a war zone without enough to eat.
  • if you meet the Buddha on the road, blow him up.
  • "if you meet the Buddha on the road, blow him up." mmm. perfect.
  • Bums for Buddha Hire bums Take bums to vegas Build buddha Take bums bowling
  • I'm surprised to see such a negative reaction to the idea. They are already building cheap replicas of the wonders of the world in Vegas. They are already donating money on eduction in Afghanistan, I suppose orders of magnitude more than what this guy plans to spend on the Buddhas. In fact, from what I hear, people give a dollar to people in their neighborhood all the time, and sometimes even further away. Because some money is spent on rebuilding Afghanistan's cultural heritage, it doesn't follow that there is no money left for more important thing. Finally, on the subject of replicas, many famous works of art are copies for various reasons. Who would now say that making a copy of the famous Dying Gaul was a mistake? The original didn't survive, so without the we wouldn't be able to imagine the naturalist power of the piece. A little bit of our understanding of the genius of ancient Greece would be lost without it.
  • "I don't give money to panhandlers the same way I don't feed pigeons" Is that a quote from the Buddha?
  • "Building the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Vegas is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals"
  • No, I'm sorry to disagree but I think it's silly. Food, comfort, care, structure and education seem to be the most important pressing demands. I do agree completely that a sense of culture helps a fragmented culture recover. But there are simply too many more important things to spend that kind of money on. Vaccines. Shelter. Kites. Peace. Once that's done they can build all the faux Buddha's they want.
  • Yes, the Buddha also once said "Just remember it's the birds that's supposed to suffer, not the hunter."
  • Not to mention the fact, Squid, that statues are manifestly unable to earn money for themselves. People aren't. The fact that I'm willing to donate to rebuild these statues does not conflict with the fact that I expect my next-door neighbor to put food on his table without my help. On the "more pressing demands" front, I'm thrilled to observe that we are sufficiently affluent to feed ourselves, own property, pay our taxes and rebuild works of art all at the same time. "Couldn't they have spent this money on something else?" is a silly response because it's always true and says nothing at all about this particular effort. Plus, if you ever spend one single penny on anything other than "vaccines, shelter, kites, peace" or whatever else you happen to think is more important, it also makes you a hypocrite. Which some people seem to consider to be the most deadly of all sins, for some reason. Finally, there's intrinsic value to me in supporting anything that would royally piss off the Taliban, if they were still around. Anything those guys hate can't be all bad.
  • Rebuilding the Buddhas of Bamiyan using bowling bums from Vegas. Badda bing, my perfect love. Can I use the new superpowers now? Cause it would be really fun.
  • Sometimes a symbol, especially an historic and beautiful one, will generate the will; the mental, emotional and other 'als necessary in people to do for themselves what no amount of charity ($$$'s) could every do. ie: You can pour resources at problems ad infinitum but unless the recipients of largess have the get-up-and-go to make it all work for them, then those resources are falling through the hole in the bucket.
  • the Taliban, if they were still around Is this a joke?
  • Oh yeah, Buddhists don't blow anything up. Rarely, they will set themselves aflame for a 'cause'- ensuring said immolation is in an area where there is no threat to other living things. And in support of Jeff Harrell, "... in supporting anything that would royally piss off the Taliban, if they are still around. Anything those guys hate can't be all bad."
  • I reckon J.H. is covering his bases Wolof. heh
  • I get the feeling that this is that "Pull up your bootstraps and get a job at McDonalds" rational. Afghanistan is a wreck-they don't even have bootstraps. We helped (along with many other nations) make that happen, largely to smooth the way for an oil pipeline from Khasikstan and Uzbeckistan. I agree that a symbol can be an important unifying agent. But very few people in Afghanistan are Buddhist. It's late and I am meandering but it seems strange to be creating expensive fake statuary representing a religion that is no longer much practiced in the area. Instead of building more schools. Also, the Taliban still exists, in a big way. I guess pissing them off would be nice but who would pay? I'm thinkiing it wouldn't be either of us.
  • I think they should rebuild them on top of 'ground-zero' in Manhattan as a replacement for the twin towers.
  • In my life I was to content to see my image only if reflected in the waters of a pool, glimpsed and then gone. Where now are the wealthy merchants of Shahr-i-Gholghola who thought that building the statues could buy them merit? Impermanence is thus. Also, I always thought they got my nose wrong.
  • Zanshin - that's now my emotional choice. Especially if we could get the nose right. But it should wait several years till we know whether Afghanistan will come through.
  • For christs s,, for Buddahs sake, just replace them with plastic. Stone carvings?? That's so out of date!!
  • You know, I just realised, reading that Bushisms page and then Jeff Harrell's comment directly after, that Jeff Harrell may be George Bush.
  • This idea dates back to 2001, I believe. Early reaction was not uniformly favourable. However, some modelling work has been completed, and a small model appeared in the Swiss pavillion at the recent World Exhibition. Others have planned 'reconstructions'elsewhere. Or maybe a tacky laser show would do? IANAB, but I think from a purely religious point of view the destroyed statues are a better image of the Buddha than the intact ones.
  • Buddha doesn't really care whether you make a statue of him or not. How does it serve you to make a statue of Buddha? If you make a statue of Buddha in the middle of Afghanistan where no Buddhist can see it, does anyone get enlightened?
  • "One who conquers the urge to build statues in the middle of the fucking desert is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield"
  • This guy wants to literally blow them up again.
  • I'd like to see them rebuilt as a testament that they shouldn't have been destroyed in they way that they were. Stone, air-sculpture, whatever. Food, comfort, care, structure and education seem to be the most important pressing demands. Agreed. At least we're not spending 250 billion+ dollars to needlessly invade and occupy a Middle-Eastern country. Now that would be stupid.
  • I love the idea of inflatable gods.
  • "It was not my decision. It was foreigners like Chechens and Arabs with the Taliban who made the decision. They were crazy people," he said in a telephone interview, pointing to the influence of foreign Islamic extremists over the hard-line regime. "Even though I was governor, I had no power." Ach, jawohl. Only followink ze orders. They have mountains in Switzerland. Build them there.
  • Taliban? Was ist das Taliban? No hablo!
  • Am I alone in thinking that some fucker would just blow them up again?
  • Wow, it's weird to clarify something you said two years ago, but I did not mean to imply that you should give booze money your local homeless person. I meant that we should donate funds first and foremost for health care, education and infrastructure for the people of Afghanistan rather than funding a rather tangential thing like the statues, which even after rebuilding will be nothing but copies of the originals. I love art and history as much as the next guy, but I think that the Buddha would agree with me that the real treasures that are worth saving are people.
  • Sic transit gloriae mundi and all that.
  • bless you.
  • but I think that the Buddha would agree with me that the real treasures that are worth saving are people. I think you're right. And I don't think he'd give a damn about the statues anyway. Besides, some fucker would just blow them up again.
  • MuwahAHAHahaaa!!errrr*cough**cough* Mmm. Yes.
  • Déjà vu or what? People are stupid.
  • I don't get it. If you don't believe in a symbol, or it holds no power for you, why the need to destroy it? I seriously doubt anyone is going to that neighbourhood to practice their heathen idolatry.
  • your infidelious remarks will bring a pox on your . . peanuts! No wait - salmon! It was the salmon!
  • Wow!
  • Why don't they let the Buddha stay hidden from the Taliban who would destroy it?
  • I'm thinkin' it's not going to be quite the same ever again...
  • I have this dream that once they get him all back together, buddha will wake up angry and go round stomping on talibunnies. Or was that a movie???
  • If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him. And if you see a statue of the Buddha blow it up. He won't mind.
  • With sadness.