Jens-UlVe Ha/'tmann Buddha's Forgotten Country

The Histo/')' of Buddhism in Afghanistan

fgbanistan was alwstupa (a Budelhist grave monument), whether it world suddenly became aware that Islam was by was found in isolation 01' together with other texts, no means the only religion which had shapeel ami l11ucb besieles. All such information woulel tell Afghanistan. As is so often the case, only the irre­ us something about religious life in Afghanistan versible lass of part of our culturallegacy maele its over a lhousand years ago, but up to now we only existence widely known. The blowing up of the have the 111anuscripts themselves anel lack infor­ Bueldhas probably brought about the opposile of mation about where anel how lhey survived for what those responsible inteneleel - anel one can over a millennium. even be pleaseel about that. Nevertheless, il is no How did Buddhis111 C0111e to Afghanistan? The consolation for the irrevocable destruction of two political creation we toelay associate with the cultural monuments of global significance. All the name 'Afghanistan' is relatively recent. lt is not Cllrrent ieleas about reconstructing the two founded on any linguistic 01' cultural unily that Bueldhas seem to me to be of e1ubious value. can look back on a long history. In the past, the These doubts arise because there are much 1110re area comprising today's state was usually divideel urgent problems to be solveel in toelay's into several kingel0111s. That was al ready the case Afghanistan than the recreation of two stone in the pre-Christian centuries, althougb we do not sculptures, no malter how helpful these monu­ know mllch about this period. The first relatively mental figures might one e1ay be in promoting a certain contact with Buddhism can be dated revival of tourism. arollnd the third century B.C. At that time the A seconel phenomenon has also contributed in Mamya dynasty was establishing the first major recent years to reneweel awareness of Afghanis­ empire in India, the north-west of wh ich also tan's Budelhist pas I, and this 100 is certainly con­ incluc!eel Pakistan anel parts of modern Afghanis­ nected wilh civil war. For about ten years now tan. This dynasty's most important mler, Ashoka, Buddhist manuscripts fro111 Afghanistan have had inscriptions prominently displayed through­ been on offer on the Western anel Far Eastern art out his empire, anc! the most westerly of these markets. Initially these were probably chance were discovered in Kandahar. Characteristically, e1iscoveries, possibly in former cave-monasteries these inscriptions were not in any Indian script or in which combatants 01' civilians hael sought ref­ language; lhey had been translatec! into Creek and uge. Unfortunately, more precise information Aramaic, lltilising the Creek alphabet. This shows about the origins and e1iscovery of these manu­ that Ashoka's empire reachec! as far as a region scripts is not available to date. Specialists quickly where Creek was obviously a linglla franca and recogniseel how sensational these finels were when useel für aelministrative purposes. This Creek in­ the first manuscripts reacheel the Western market, fluence had arrived and talk of 'The Dead Sea Scrolls of Buelelhism' with Alexaneler the Tile Big /3uclclclila of /3a/1l/yan, /93/ was soon e10ing the rounds. This was enthusiast i­ Creat, who advan­ Photo laken (,0/11 Belen/ce Geoff- cally taken up by the English-Ianguage meelia ancl cecl as far as India roy-Sc!uleiter's !JoDle "Ghanclala" many press stories ensureel that news of the new in 327 - 326, exten­ With killd per/nisslon o( 1(llcse!Jrc!\ manuscripts spreael far ami wiele. ding his empire in lo Vellag, MUllich.

Art & Thought 34 the Punjab, His campaign left no lasting traces in Iy true, The oldest depicLion of the Buddha known India itself and Alexander's empire began to dis­ to us is on the obverse of a coin showing Kanish­ integrate after his death, but the Greek cultural ka, On the other hand, coins also demonstrate that influences remained a dominant element in the the Kuchanas clearly pursued a very even-handed Eastern states which then came into existence, poHcy with regard to religion, promoting all the The most easterly Greek town we know of today faiths represented in their empire, was excavated in the 1960s by a team of French Political stability favours trade, and trade then archaeologists in the far north of Afghanistan - at generates a flourishing economy, which enables Ai Khanum on the Amu Darya, The influence of the provision of a viable basis for craftsmen and Greek and later Roman cultme persisted for cen­ artists as weil as representatives of the various tmies, and after the start of the new millennium religions, This laid the foundation stone for made a wonderfnl contribution to the emergence Gandhara art. Gandhara was originally the old of Buddhist art. We will turn to that in a moment. name for the region around Peshawar, It was Under Ashoka, Buddhism in India seems to however subsequently appHed to a considerably have blossomed initially, so it is to be assumed larger artistic area characterised by a relatively that political stability and the associated long­ unified style, Indian art scholars today use this distance trade also favomed extension of order to designation for a region comprising parts of the north-west of the empire, However, sure signs Afghanistan, the northern part of Pakistan, and of this expansion are only known from the first the extreme north-western corner of India, For century B,C" particularly in the form of dated centuries the Buddha had been represented by inscriptions, Dateable evidence only becomes symbols such as a footprint, rather than being more prolific in the post-millennium centuries, depicted figuratively, This period is termed the particularly through donor inscriptions, in which 'anti-iconic' phase of Buddhist art. Under the the names of individual Buddhist sects may ap­ Kuchanas, however, the first figurative depictions pear, Buddhism experienced an enormous up­ 01' the Buddha were simultaneously produced in surge when a large new empire was established northern lndia and Gandhara, In northern India in the nOl'th-west during the first century A,D, artists based their work on Indian precedents, cre­ Amigrant people from Central Asia, whose origins ating a unified form of representation, In Gan­ are not entirely deal', seized power in Bactria (an dhara, however, artists took the still-present fon11s old empire incorporating the north of Afghanistan of Greco-Roman art as their model, thereby crea­ with Balq as its capital), Hs rulers belonged to the ting that unique synthesis of Western forms and Kuchana tribe, which gave its name to both the Indian content which has become world-famous dynasty and the empire, They succeeded in conLi­ as 'Gandhara art', For portraying the Buddha they nually expanding their sphere of influence, which used the Greek god Apollo as a model, for secon­ eventually incorporated Afghanistan, Pakistan, dary figures other Greek gods such as Hermes or large parts of northern India and areas of Uzbekis­ Fortuna, ami for Bodhisaltvas, an exceptionally tan, and reached rar into Central Asia, Political important category of mediators of salvation, stability once again favoured long-distance trade, depictions of Roman youths, This art was famous­ One of the most important trading routes was the Iy and particularly impressively exemplified by the 'Silk Road', a network of commercial connections sculpture at the Hadda monastery (not far from which at its height linked the capital of the Roman Jalalabad), which was extensively restored a Empire in the West with that of the Chinese while ago but is now said to have been cOl11plete­ Empire in the East. Several branches to the south Iy destroyed in the recent upheavals, The specific joined the Indian sub-continent to this East-West formal character of Gandhara art clid not only axis, and one such connection also led through influence lndia, 1110difying representation of the Afghanistan, However, these trading routes were Buddha that originated there, It was also transl11it­ not only used by merchants, Buddhist monks tra­ ted to Central Asia by way of the Silk Road, and velled through Pakistan and Afghanistan and then then on to China, becoming the basic model for all on the Silk Road, firstly to Central Asia and final­ East Asian Buddhist art. Iy to China, spreading their religion wherever they In this art Indian and Greco-Roman elements went. were mergecl, giving rise to a fascinating and auto­ Buddhism obviously flourished under the Ku­ nomous new style, The situation was obviously chanas, The first monasteries were built, frequent­ very different with regard to Buddhist literature, as Iy endowed by members of the ruling dynasty, and can be seen more clearly todal', Over the past ten stupas were erected, This dynasty's most impor­ years several thollsand fragments of Buddhist tant representative, Kanishka, who according to manuscripts have reached the West and Japan, current knowledge acceded to the throne in 125 None of these manuscripts contains a date, but the A,D" appears in historical sources as an outstan­ development of writing makes it possible to show ding patron of Buddhism, That was certainly part- that they were produced between the first and the

Art & Thoughl 36 eighth centuries A.D. With just one exception all the history of Buddhism in Afghanistan thus these fragments are written in Indian languages remains extremely fragmentary. We basically con­ and scripts. This shows that in the realm of litera­ tinue to be dependent on evaluation of archaeolo­ ture Buddhism did not seek to adapt itself to local gical evidence. Nevertheless, they do show us that conditions, for instance by translating works Buddhism must have received exceptional support brought from India into local languages, as was at least for a time. The S3 metre Buddha at the case in China and Tibet. The oldest fragments Bamiyan was the largest such statue in the world probably date back to the first half of the first cen­ and considerable funds were required to create tury, just at the beginning of the new millennium. this work. Bamiyan lay on the trade route linking This is absolutely sensational. Afghanistan can the Silk Road with India and will have profited now lay claim to having preserved not only the considerably from this commerce, but we know oldest Buddhist ma­ nothing about the monks who lived in the monas­ nuscripts, but also tery caves around the two large Buddhas, the reli­ the oldest existing gious festivals and rituals held there, or the num­ manuscripts contai­ ber of believers who visited these monuments. ning works in an However, there is one unique document, a Indian language. kind of eye-witness account, whieh does preserve Until now that emi­ so me information about Bamiyan and Buddhism nence belonged to in Afghanistan. Between 629 and 64S, a Chinese remnants of manus­ monk called Xuan Zang unelertook a pilgrimage to cripts discovered by holy Buddhist sites in India anel wrote a kind of a German expedi­ travel diary recoreling places, distances, anel speci­ tion a hund red years al aspects. He travelled from China on the Silk ago aIong the Silk Roael towards the west, and then followeel the Road in Central route south by way of Bamiyan and Peshawar to Asia, but these are India. He elescribes Bamiyan and aelll1ires both the between one and great Bueldha and the religious seriousness of the two centuries more people there, a characteristic which he thinks Buddha performing the mirac/e recent than the new elistinguishes them from their neighbours. of Srava<;ti. "tli Ce/ltury B. C. finds from Afgha­ EIsewhere, however, Xuan Zang notiees phenome­ Reproc/llct/OII frolll Bt'm"nice nistan. This la test na indicating that Buddhism is starting to decline. Geoffroy-Srhneiler's IJOol< discovery involves There may have been economic reasons for this. "Gandliara ". With killd pe/missio/l metre-Iong rolls of Buddhist monks are forbidden to work and are of I(nese/Jeci< Verlag, !\lllIlIich birch bark. They are thus dependent on material support from an asso­ inscribed in Kha­ ciated community. So if political upheavals leael to roshti, an Indian language whieh is written from loss of affluence, a religion like Buddhism quickly right to left. It was used in the north-west of the gets into difficulties. The important factor is that Indian sub-continent for some centuries before this decay obviously got under way long before and after the new millennium, and was then taken Islam arrived in Afghanistan. The popular c1iche over during the Kushana empire as an administra­ that the militant advance of Islam leel to the tive language. It completely vanished soon after destruction of Buddhism everywhere from that empire fell. These rolls were probably found Afghanistan to northern India is in no way true. near lalalabad, where they may have been Instead there are many indications that economic 'buried' inside a large pot. Birch-bark dries out anel probably also religious factors initiateel a over the course of time, becoming extremely brit­ elecline a long time earlier. It has not yet been pos­ tle, so a very elaborate restoration process was sible to put a precise date on when Buddhism necessary before the manuscripts could be unrol­ eame to an enel in Afghanistan, but the general led ancl made readable. This was carried out by assumption is that it gradually vanished dming specialists from the British Library in London the 8th or 9th century. That view is confirmed by where the discovery is now being stored. dating the most recent Buddhist manuscripts from Deeipherment of these rolls revealed that they Afghanistan as originating in the 8th century. So were exclusively devoted to the preservation 01' Buddhism helped shape culture and history in the specific works of Indian Buddhism. This is highly Hindu Kush for around a thousand years, ami - as significant since these works were previously we discover today, with great enthusiasm - it did believed to be lost. However, neither these rolls after all leave behind far more, and far more nor more recent manuseripts, which were written important, testimony in Afghanistan than would either on birch-bark or Indian pa Im leaves, con­ have been thought possible just a few years ago. tain any information revealing more about the Jens Uwr Hartl7lann lcaches Hislal)l or Buddhisl7l al Ihe Univer· history of Buddhism in this region. Our picture of sill' or [vlunich.

Art & Thought 37 POETRY ART&mOUGIIT FIKRUNWA FANN 41 st (2nd) .yeal~ no. 78 (no: 3) November 2003- May 2004,

Publisher: Goethe-Institute

Chief Editor: Stefan Weidner

Editorial Board: Manutshehr Amirpur Brigitte Oleschinski Ahmad Hissou G2 Mission Impossible Stefan Weidner A Trip to the First International Poetry Festival in Indonesia Translations: Timothy Nevill Copy Editor: Charlotte Collins Ranjit Hoskote 68 Loolcing for Anchorage, Assistance with photographic material: and Not in Alasl

Special thanks to Ratbil Ahang Sh,uriel and his reliable German-Afghan l1<:I"VVU'H~"" REVIEWS Layout & Design: Stefan Weidner Graphicteam Köln Bonn 72 Saying the Unspeakable Michael Krupp AGD A New Story by Atiq Rahimi Printing: Köllen Druck + Verlag

Bettina Prato Pliblisher's Address: 73 Earning the Right to Watch Goethe Institut Inter Nationes Slisan Sonlag's Kennedyallee 91-1O~. "Regarding The Pain of Olhers" 53175 Bonn Germany Stefan Weidner 75 A Pinch of Afghano-Centrism Please Editor's Address: Nicolas Bouvier's Travels in Afghanistan Art & Thought/Fikrun wa Fann Kasparstr. 41 Michael Thoss '50670 Köln 77 Khaled Hosseini's Novel Germany "The I

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Art & Thought is a cultural magazine published twice a year bythe German Goethe Institute in English,. Arabic ("Fikrun wa Fann"), "" and Farsi ("Andishe va Honar."). 130 Alighiero Boetti and Afghanistan ~ GOETH!-INSTITUT