Sutra may help crack Buddha mystery

Kyodo News (HindustanTimes.com); Sondrak; Ghostofaflea; Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddha statues of Bamiyan, Afghanistan (azaranica.blogspot.com)

A part of a Buddhist sutra was found inside one of the two giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan. They provide a hint of an unveiling mystery surrounding the creation of the statues, a Japanese news agency has reported.

• According to the Russian mystic Madame Blavatsky, cofounder of Theosophy, the statues were built long, long ago and repurposed as the Buddha-to-come, Maitreya.
  

The fragment of the scripture was believed to be an original Sanskrit document, using a script common in the sixth and seventh century, according to a Kyodo news dispatch from the modern Afghan capital, Kabul.

A German team of researchers from the International Council on Monuments and Sites found the sutra in July inside the rubble of the remains of the Buddhas, said the report, printed in major Japanese newspapers.

The researchers believed it was placed inside the eastern side of what used to be the world’s tallest standing Buddha statues. They were damaged in 2001 by [the CIA-instigated] "Taliban" Islamic extremists.

Although various scripts have been found inside Buddha statues in Japan, it was the first time a sutra was found inside an Afghan Buddha statue, Kyodo said.

The script was written in “Gilgit/Bamiyan type 1 characters,” which were used in a region that spread over what is now northern India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan [formerly a region referred to as Gandhara], Kyodo said.

The document was the beginning section of a sutra that spelled out basic Buddhist tenets and said all things were impermanent, Kyodo reports.

The defacing of these world heritage site statues is a loss for Afghanistan, archeology, and the world at large. But these these ancient writings would not likely have come to light if religious zealots had not been inspired to make war the military-industrial complex could profit from.

Bamiyan, possibly the remnants of a town nestled in the remains of ancient Kapilavastu, the Shakyan kingdom (davidderrick.wordpress.com).