The destruction of its most famous archaeological monuments -- the giant stone figures known as the Bamiyan Buddhas [in formerly Buddhist Afghanistan] -- led to global condemnation of the Taliban regime.
But now one of the Buddhas is rising again, except this time in western China, where a team of workmen are carving a replica figure into a cliff-face in Sichuan.
As more than 300 stonemasons chip away at the rock, the giant figure is gradually emerging into view. The sandstone cliff near Leshan, in the lush green hills of Western China, is redder than the more golden sandstone near Bamiyan.
Nonetheless, the Chinese project aims to recreate the Afghan Buddha the way it used to be, before erosion and intolerance destroyed its face and dynamite reduced it to a heap of rubble.
The figure will be 121 feet (37 meters) high -- the same as the smaller of the two Bamiyan statues. It is being carved by hand with mallets and chisels, just like the original figures.
The Afghan statue is the brainchild of a Chinese businessman, Liang Simian. He runs a Buddha theme park near Leshan, which has its own ancient giant Buddha figure. The 3,000 Buddhas in his theme park are all modern replicas, but that does not worry the tourists who come to see them.
Although many of China's Buddhas were destroyed during its so-called [Communist] Cultural Revolution, [he] said China now liked to protect religion. And while it would be better to be able to see the originals, visiting copies was almost as good.
Improving or ruining the Buddha with a face lift for unnatural "perfection"?
The creators of the Sichuan statue claim that, in at least one way, their statue will be better than the original, which had [its] face disfigured in the 8th century by the first Muslim invaders before the Taliban could arrive [centuries later] to destroy the entire monolith. In China the Buddha will have a perfect face as the Chinese are recreating what they believe to be its original face, modeled on the heads of surviving Afghan Buddhas.
Jihads against China
Unlike its Muslim neighbors to the west -- Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan -- China is (unofficially) Buddhist today. This is due to the largely forgotten struggle waged by the Chinese kings against the Muslim Jihadis who began forays into western China from the 7th century onwards.
After the defeat of the Zoroastrian Sassanid empire of Iran, the Arab Muslim armies reached the borders of Chinese T'ang empire in the year 651. The westernmost province of the T'ang empire, which bordered the Sassanid empire, was inhabited and governed by the Turko-Sino-Mongoloid clans like the Qarluqs and Seljuqs.
The Forgotten First Chinese-Muslim clash
Little is known of the bloody struggle that border clans of the Chinese T'ang empire waged against Islam for 100 years beginning in 651 AD. The first clash of the Turko-Sino-Mongoloid clans (within the T'ang empire) with the advancing Islamic Jihad took place when the Muslims surged through Persia.
They reached the borders of the T'ang and Persian Sassanid empires in Khorasan, near Central Asia. In those days the Turks ruled Central Asia as subjects of the T'ang emperors of China. The Turks were referred to as Turanians by the ancient Persians of Zoroaster's time. More
[Zoroaster or Zarathustra was an asura or "titan" (a literal giant descended from space violently opposed to devas, the name meaning "undiluted star being") who introduced what is now a largely defunct (pre-Islamic) religion opposed to Buddhism. While it only survives in Bombay, India where Zoroastrians are called Parsis, "Persians" who came from Iran, some of its teachings were appropriated by Christianity.]
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