But thanks to the Macedonian Alexander the Great, Hellenistic and Buddhist cultures came into contact in the 4th century BCE, creating a cultural synthesis known as Greco-Buddhism.
Artifacts such as a
Buddhist sculpture have been extracted from the Mes Aynak [Copper Well] archaeology
site where miners want to extract rich deposits of copper [gold, and rare earth minerals] (Jay Price/Getty Images).
Afghanistan is sitting on an estimated US $1 trillion dollars' worth of minerals
including gold, copper, iron, barite, sulphur, rubies, emeralds, lapis lazuli,
mercury, silver, lead, zinc, bauxite, and lithium (Andy Miller/BusinessToday.intoday.in).
Mes Aynak highlights Afghanistan's dilemma over protecting [its fabulous Buddhist] heritage
The quest for copper [gold, and rare earth mineral] riches in Mes Aynak ["Copper Well"] is a battle pitting culture and commerce.
IN BRIEF: Archeologists have uncovered countless priceless artifacts at the ancient
Buddhist settlement called Mes Aynak in Logar province, 21 miles (35 km) south of Kabul. The site includes an
ancient copper and gold mine, a series of monasteries and nunneries, homes, and
workshops. But a Chinese state mining
company, MCC, won a $3 billion mineral contract in 2007 to plunder it, one of the largest in the world. The mine sits directly beneath
the ancient settlement because the original artisans used the metals there. The Chinese have built a camp for their Chinese workers, who are being shipped in rather than hired locally and plant to build a railway and power station (Jerome Starkey).
The ruins of Mes Aynak straddle a copper deposit so rich that
many of the rocks are brilliant green with oxidized ore from a seam of
metal first exploited 5,000 years ago.
The remaining copper cannot
be extracted without destroying not just the ruins but the entire hill
they perch on, and efforts to develop the mine have often been cast as a
battle between the heartless miners and valiant archaeologists, racing
against time to save their heritage.
Mes Aynak treasure: precious jewellery from hoard dated 500-700 ACE (Salam Viking)
The Alliance for the
Restoration of Cultural Heritage (ARCH), a US non-profit organization,
has led a publicity campaign to prevent the mine, as currently
envisaged, from going ahead.
It has been so successful that the World
Bank office in [the Afghan capital of] Kabul faces an internal investigation for supporting the
dig and the mine development.
But none of ARCH's four directors have a background in cultural heritage,
and several have connections to US mining companies interested in
Afghan contracts. They are Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan, his wife, his business associate in the lobbying firm Gryphon Partners, and a well-travelled restaurateur.
Mes Aynak, Afghanistan: a massive Buddhist temple complex in danger of
demolition due to US war, Afghan desperation, and Chinese greed (Science, Vol. 329/Irtiqa).
Khalilzad has been openly critical of China's
mining companies and a bidding system that he argues favors them in
Afghanistan, the country where he was born and later returned as the
first US ambassador after the fall of the [CIA-created] Taliban.
"The performance of Chinese companies is improving but they have a long
way to go," he wrote in a 2011 opinion article for Foreign Policy
entitled How many ways can we lose in Afghanistan,
which criticized Chinese firms on issues including [the planned demolition] of
cultural heritage.
"It is certainly ironic that Chinese firms are at an
advantage over western companies due to defence department procedures,"
he wrote, before ending on a slightly less gloomy note: "It is not
inevitable that Afghanistan's valuable resources fall into the hands of
the Chinese."
Afghan archeologists and experts working on mining
have a more complex view of the [intended] mine's impact than ARCH.
Abdul Qadir
Temori, head of the Afghan Institute of Archeology, who has committed
his entire team of more than 30 graduate archaeologists to Mes Aynak,
says the site is so complex and fascinating that experts could easily
spend two decades picking over it.
In an ideal world that would be
the case, he says. But Afghanistan is desperately poor and has suffered
30 years of violence, which means leaving artifacts in the ground... More
Mes Aynak, a magnificent Buddhist city,
is the most important archaeological discovery in a generation. But it
is sitting on a vast mineral deposit and is about to be destroyed. William Dalrymple reports from Afghanistan.
Bamiyan: Wonderful of the World Heritage Shovelbum.com The giant Afghan Buddhas, carved into a mountainside at Bamiyan in the heart of the Hindu Kush mountains, were among Asia’s great archaeological treasures.
In antiquity, central Afghanistan was strategically placed to thrive from the Silk Road caravans which criss-crossed the region trading between the Roman Empire, China, and India. One of the stopping-off points was the old kingdom of Kushan, whose people were responsible for carving these Buddhist wonders of the ancient world.
The larger statue stood at 53 metres (125 feet) above the town of Bamiyan [possibly the original Kapilavastu, where Siddhartha grew up before becoming the Buddha] -- as high as a 10-storey building.
It was considered to be the [largest and] most remarkable representation of the Buddha anywhere in the world. At one time, it and a 38-metre-high companion were painted in gold and other bright colors. And they were decked in dazzling ornaments.
All around there was a synthesis of Greek, Persian [Indo-Iranian/Aryan], Central Asian, and South Asian art. There were countless rich frescoes.
On one cave wall, there remain traces of a painting of Buddhas in maroon robes strolling in fields of flowers. In another painting, milk-white horses draw the Sun God’s golden chariot [vimana, space ship, UFO] through a dark blue sky.
Bamiyan was a place of pilgrimage. There were 10 Buddhist monasteries built into the cliff [a labyrinth of caves and crevices] -- the home of saffron-robed Buddhist monks and nuns, who presided over festivals.
Muslim Afghanistan
The monastics and pilgrims left 14 centuries ago when Islam [conquerors] came to the Hindu Kush. Bamiyan fell into neglect.
For a short time, the 1960's hippy trail passed through Bamiyan. It became a hub for a new kind of traveler. But Afghanistan’s 20 years of civil war put a stop to that. The area played an important strategic role.
For many years it was the stronghold of the Hezb-i-Whadat party, the main faction of the Shi’a Muslims of the center of the country.
Hezb-i-Whadat is a member of the Northern Alliance which opposes the purist [CIA-created] Taliban movement. They apparently approached the site with a mixture of suspicion and disinterested neglect.
It became variously an ammunition dump and home to dozens of families displaced by the war [who took up residence in the caves]. Those who visited Bamiyan said this treatment was threatening the integrity of the monuments and structures.
The Hezb were driven out by the Taliban in the campaigns of 1997 and 1998. Despite their abhorrence of idols and un-Islamic images, the Taliban initially assured the international community that the site would come to no harm.
But that restraint has now been dropped [thanks almost certainly to CIA pressure], apparently in the belief that there is little to be gained from bowing to the sensibilities of the outside world.
Why destroy a world heritage site?
Seven and Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS)
The CIA by vilifying the extremist Taliban -- which it created from released prisoners in neighboring countries, according to Fitzgerald and Gould -- was intent on creating a pretext to attack and invade the entire country of Afghanistan while claiming to be rooting out just the Taliban. With 9-11 and Osama bin Laden/Emmanuel Goldstein, it found a fertile narrative to justify the US's longest war ever. The real interest the US has in controlling Afghanistan follows the history of many previous empires (British, Indian, Persian, Central Asian, Russian, Roman, Greek). It is a strategic interest to control the region by launching attacks from a centralized base and airstrips. The other dominant interest is an oil pipeline that had already been arranged and contracted before the US invaded. There is a great deal of money to be made and influence to be exerted. Meanwhile, ancient Buddhism falls by the wayside. Now China is extracting mineral riches and demolishing the world's largest Buddhist archeological site and Afghan monastery at Mes Aynak.
A Journey to the Bamiyan valley, Afghanistan, to see remarkable Buddhist landmarks (link).
According to non-Jonesian historical and archaeological finds, Gautama Buddha was likely not born in present day Nepal, as is widely believed, but in a defunct Indian-Hellenistic-Persian empire. And he is likely to have been born much earlier than currently placed by some historians. This would explain a number of anomalies. (Details at http://www.ranajitpal.com/ from the 2003 book Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander by Ranajit Pal). One anomaly is the profusion of Buddhist archaeological sites -- such as Bamiyan with the largest Buddha images in the world -- in modern Afghanistan.
It also accords with the Buddha's own repeated claim to be an Aryan rather than a brahmin or someone from the area. "Aryan" to this day is literally understood to mean "Iranian"; figuratively, it is a "noble" (an epitaph for "enlightened") or a warrior. "Aryan invaders," in ancient Indian history and even older mythology, are believed to have overrun the Indus Valley cultures bringing Sanskrit civilization to the Dravidian people along with phenomenal technological and spiritual advances.
No one disputes that the Buddha came from a kingdom in the north, only how far north, or that he had blue eyes and golden skin and strikingly different features than most of his ass. It also better explains the Dharma's wide influence on Hellenistic Greece even as subsequent religious campaigns (Persian Zoroastrianism, Middle Eastern Islam, indigenous Hinduism, British Christianity, and European Catholicism) overran it in India.
This also helps explain the Sri Lankan insistence and its embroidered histories (Mahavamsa, Buddhavamsa, etc.) link it to Aryan-Indian ancestry rather than Southern Indian (Tamil) or aboriginal (Yakkha) stock. Its flag and lion insignia are essentially that of Iran, and its mythology is recounted in the Ramayana, the story of Rama. The new non-Jonesian view posits that:
"Rama may have been the ruler of the Indus cities, Iran and Sumer. He was also seen to be an ancestor of Gotama Buddha and the Achaemenian kings. I. M. Diakonoff and D. McAlpin have pointed to a link of Elamite with Dravidian, but the links between Elamite and Indian civilization also extend to history. Although Rama is usually thought to be an Aryan, he was called Elamite and in Indian art he is usually painted in blue, whereas his brother Lakshmana and wife Sita are shown as light-skinned." More>>
Greco-Buddhism, sometimes spelled Græco-Buddhism, is the cultural syncretism between the culture of Classical Greece and Buddhism, which developed over a period of close to 800 years in Central Asia in the area corresponding to modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, between the 4th century BC and the 5th century AD.
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Greco-Buddhism influenced the artistic (and, possibly, conceptual) development of Buddhism, and in particular Mahayana Buddhism, before it was adopted by Central and Northeastern Asia from the 1st century AD, ultimately spreading to China, Korea and Japan.
History
General area of Greco-Buddhism, and boundaries of the Kushan empire at its greatest extent around 150 AD.
The interaction between Hellenistic Greece and Buddhism started when Alexander the Great conquered Asia Minor and Central Asia in 334 BC, going as far as the Indus, thus establishing direct contact with India, the birthplace of Buddhism.
Alexander founded several cities in his new territories in the areas of the Oxus and Bactria, and Greek settlements further extended to the Khyber Pass, Gandhara (see Taxila), and the Punjab. These regions correspond to a unique geographical passageway between the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush mountains, through which most of the interaction between India and Central Asia took place, generating intense cultural exchange and trade.
Following Alexander's death on June 10, 323 BC, his Diadochi (generals) founded their own kingdoms in Asia Minor and Central Asia. General Seleucus set up the Seleucid Kingdom, which extended as far as India. Later, the Eastern part of the Seleucid Kingdom broke away to form the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (3rd–2nd century BC), followed by the Indo-Greek Kingdom (2nd–1st century BC), and later still by the Kushan Empire (1st–3rd century AD).
The interaction of Greek and Buddhist cultures operated over several centuries until it ended in the 5th century AD with the invasions of the White Huns, and later the expansion of Islam. More>>
Buddhism so influenced the ancient world that even money felt the impact among the Greeks (see Greco Buddhism).
Buddhists around the world
Vipassana Foundation (thedhamma.ocm)
The number of Buddhists around the world is grossly under-estimated. The statistics found in nearly all encyclopedias and almanacs place the number of Buddhists at approximately 500 million. This figure completely ignores over one billion Chinese people who live in the People's Republic of China.
While China is officially "communist" (although many free market conditions are already in place), it does not keep records on religion statistics. Another problem is that many Western reference sources refuse to accept that a person can belong to more than one religion. In Asia it is quite common for one person to have two, three, or more religions. In China, it is extremely common for a family to have a shrine in their home with statues and icons from Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.
Currently there are about 1.3 billion Chinese living in the People's Republic. Surveys (Gach-Alpha Books, U.S. State Dept. report on China, Global Center for the Study of Contemporary China, BBC News, China Daily, and a report by Christian missionaries in China) have found that about 8% to 91% identify Buddhism as one of their religions.
A percentage near the upper end of this estimate, or about 80%, works out to there being about 1.1 billion Chinese Buddhists. To ignore over one billion people as if they do not count is a terrible miscount and very misleading in the reporting of adherents. A Chinese Buddhist forum (bskk.com) currently has about 60,000 registered members and over 2 million posts, which is about double the amount of the largest English language Buddhist forum (which also has Chinese Buddhists participating in the discussions). But to be above reproach, a more conservative estimate is also shown (see below).
The following are links to studies that have analyzed or counted the number of Buddhists in China and the percentage found in their studies:
U.S. State Department report: approximately 8% to 40% (the report lists 8% but then states that there are "hundreds of millions" of Chinese who practice various religions together, which includes Buddhism).
The counting of Buddhists in America is also a little problematic since the U.S. Census Bureau does not ask religious affiliation. There are studies that suggest the percentage of Buddhists in America is More>>
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