American Buddhist Net

Thursday, July 03, 2008

LAHORE: In the forest of Sravasti there lived some ascetics who scoffed at the teachings of Buddha and questioned his greatness. In order to put an end to this controversy, King Paranjit (or Parshajita) of Sravasti decided to invite the hermits as well as Buddha.

In an enormous hall a large gathering assembled for the occasion. The arrival of Buddha was awaited, that moment a dense cloud drifted in and slowly as it evaporated Buddha was seen standing in the centre.

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The rise and fall of Bhddhism in South Asia
Author: M. Abdul Mu'min Chowdhury
Publisher: London Institute of South Asia
Pages 358, Price: Taka 500/- US$ 15

Before the rise of Brahmanism the subcontinent was overwhelmingly Buddhist. South Asian monks and merchants had introduced Buddhism to other countries. Although in those Asian countries it continues to prosper, in South Asia it survives only as a jumbled memory. The human agency, the Aryan-Brahmans, behind the unusual fate of Buddhism in the subcontinent also became its modern day historiographers.

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Thursday, Jun. 26, 2008

Mirza Hussain, and other prisoners like him, had labored for hours to stack mines, bombs and dynamite beneath the feet of Afghanistan's most iconic public artwork — a 175-foot standing statue of the Buddha carved from the sandstone cliffs of the Bamiyan Valley sometime in the 7th century. Finally, the local Taliban commander blew his whistle, and hundreds of observers plugged their ears, held their breath and waited for the Buddha to fall. It didn't. The first load of explosives only destroyed the statue's feet.

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Sun, Jun. 22, 2008
By Steven Rea

'You know that Genghis Khan is one of the most unpopular names in Russia," says filmmaker Sergei Bodrov. "We Russians spent 250 years under Mongolian rule, so we still blame Mongols for all our problems. I read about Genghis Khan, of course, in my school books, and he is portrayed very badly. He is an evil warmonger, and so on.

"But I became suspicious, because I didn't think he was born as a monster, and I found interesting stories about his childhood, and the young years of his life."

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WAH CANTT, June 20 (APP): The archaeologists team of the Federal Department of Archaeology and Museums found a statue of Bodhisattva Maitreya made of black shiest stone belongs to second century AD at the Buddhist monastery locally called Badal Pur situated about 13 km north-east of Taxila Museum.

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Tue Jun 17, 2008
By Ben Blanchard

KASHGAR, China (Reuters) - China locked down the far-western former Silk Road city of Kashgar on Tuesday in preparation for the passage of the Olympic torch relay through the sensitive region populated by ethnic-minority Muslim Uighurs.

Shops lining Wednesday's torch route were shuttered and police stood guard on every street corner. Soldiers and firefighters patrolled the main square of a city seen as the heart of Islam in China's oil-rich border region of Xinjiang.

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Gandhara was a very important Buddhist region in the ancient world and was a major influence on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Buddhism. ABN
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ISLAMABAD, Jun 16 (APP): Steps including preservation and promotion of ancient cultural heritage of Gandhara through maintaining its identity, will definitely lure a large number of tourists from across the globe.

Chief Monk of Korea, Jeon Woon Deok, expressed his views here during the presentation of a proposal titled “Gandhara Renaissance” for the restoration of Gandhara sites including Takht-Bahi and its surroundings.

The Chief Monk said the monastery of Takht-Bahi physically belongs to Pakistan but spiritually it is attached to Buddhists and its renaissance would create inter-civilization harmony in the region.

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By Alisa Tang, Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan — The girl was 11 when she was molested by a man with no legs.

The man paid her $5. And that was how she started selling sex.

Afghanistan is one of the world's most conservative countries, yet its sex trade appears to be thriving. Sex is sold most obviously at brothels full of women from China who serve both Afghans and foreigners. Far more controversial are Afghan prostitutes, who stay underground in a society that pretends they don't exist.

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Islamabad, June 10 (ANI): The relics of three civilizations have been found in Pakistan, namely from the 2,400 year old Buddhist era, 8th century AD Hindu period, and the 300-year-old Aurangzeb period.

According to a report in The International News, the relics were found under Margalla Hills, at a distance of 15 kilometres from the main Golra intersection in Pakistan.

Among the findings are cages belonging to the Buddhists.

Here, monks used to perform their religious rites in isolation and the emergence of murals on the wall support this view.

The murals were not visible previously, but with the passage of time, the layers of smoke and dust over the walls washed out and the original came out, said Ansar Ahmed, an archaeologist.

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Sunday, June 8, 2008
By Saeed Shah

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — It began with an errant dog. It's culminated with the forced betrothal of 15 little girls, some of them as young as three, as compensation in a case of tribal feuding in a remote part of Pakistan.

It's thought that around 20 people have died in the bitter quarrel, and the marriage offer of the girls is meant to end the bloodletting.

Under a brutal custom, called Vani, the girls are being traded as settlement of a long-running dispute between two tribes. This case occurred on the border between the southern provinces of Sindh and Baluchistan, but the practice, known as Swara in some areas, isn't uncommon in rural parts of Pakistan.

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By BRIAN ROSS
May 30, 2008

The Pakistani scientist blamed for running a rogue network that sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya has recanted his confession, telling ABC News the Pakistani government and President Perez Musharraf forced him to be a "scapegoat" for the "national interest."

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Wed, 28 May 2008 15:46:15
By Hedieh Ghavidel, Press TV, Tehran

Manichaeism, presumably an offshoot of Zoroastrianism, was not only an inspiration for various heretical movements in Christianity but also dominated the religious life of Central and Eastern Asia for centuries.

Through the four centuries of Sassanid rule over Persia (224-651 CE) Zoroastrianism was the official state religion. Historians, however, have spoken of several heretical sects. One such cult was that of the Manicheans, founded by Mani at the beginning of the Sassanid era.

The founder of the new religion believed to have been the culmination of Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Buddhism was born in 216 CE in southern Babylonia of noble Persian stock.

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May 22, 2008

VILNIUS - After more than a month of digging work in the Ghor province of Afghanistan, Lithuanian archeologists collected large amounts of evidence about cultures that prospered in the region centuries ago.

...One of the key findings was the remains of a Buddhist monastery hand-carved in the bluff of the River Harirud. The artificial caves revealed testimony of daily life of the Buddhist monks. Specialists believe the monastery could have existed in the first centuries of our era during the prevalence of Buddhism in the current territory of Afghanistan, which was later pushed back by Islam.

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05/20/2008

When I ran across these jaw-droppingly striking pictures, I couldn't believe I'd never heard of the Kalash Tribe — and I wanted to rectify that immediately. The tribe lives nestled in the North-Western Province of Pakistan. Protected by the Hindu Kush mountain range lives this culture of people Muslims call Kafirs or “infidels”.

Among the region known as Kafiristan lies the town of Brir, considered one of the last remaining settlements of the Kalash — or “wearers of black." Its inhabitants consider themselves the direct descendants of Alexander the Great. The 3,500 souls are the last enclave of pagan tribespeople.

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Sunday, May 18, 2008
Schezee Zaidi, ISB

The land of Pakistan is blessed with the vast treasure troves of the world and one of the most important treasures is the glorious Gandhara civilisation flourishing in the northwestern areas of Pakistan. It is immensely important to highlight the ‘immeasurable treasure’ of Gandhara culture and release to the world the knowledge and insight into the richness of the ancient civilisation that remained the cradle of culture and seat of learning and legacy of the ancient world.

Esther Park, the founder of Gandhara Art & Culture Association (GACA), said this while giving an interview to ‘The News’ regarding an elaborate plan for preserving and promoting the ancient heritage with an elaborate academic, economic & beautification project map under the auspices of GACA aiming to promote religious tourism and cultural education in Pakistan that harbours rich Buddhist treasures.

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May 6, 2008
Posted by Fotopoulou Sophia

Some time after Taliban came into power a collection of Buddhist manuscripts from Afghanistan were acquired by The Schoyen Collection. The manuscripts are often referred to as the "Dead Sea scrolls of Buddhism".

The Schoyen Collection is allegedly one of the largest private collections of ancient manuscripts in the world. The single largest group of manuscripts in the collection are thousands of fragments of possibly 1400 Buddhist manuscripts taken out of Afghanistan after Taliban came to power. The manuscripts were found in a cave close to Bamiyan, and they might be part of a library that was damaged in the late 7th or 8th century. The manuscripts were made available for researchers after the purchase, and an international research group, directed from the University of Oslo, Norway, aims at investigating and publishing them.

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2008-05-03 12:47:05 -

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The United Nations said it is investigating reports Saturday that a controlled explosion of old ordnance has caused more damage to the remains of one of the famed Bamiyan Buddha statues that were dynamited by the Taliban seven years ago.

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The world was in shock when in 2001 the Talibans destroyed two ancient colossal Buddha statues in the Afghan region of Bamiyan. Behind those statues, there are caves decorated with precious paintings from 5th to 9th century A.D. The caves also suffered from Taliban destruction, as well as from a severe natural environment, but today they have become the source of a major discovery. Scientists have proved, thanks to experiments performed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), that the paintings were made of oil, hundreds of years before the technique was "invented" in Europe.

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April 22, 2008

The world was in shock when in 2001 the Taliban destroyed two ancient colossal Buddha statues in the Afghan region of Bamiyan. Behind those statues, there are caves decorated with precious paintings from 5th to 9th century A.D. The caves also suffered from Taliban destruction, as well as from a severe natural environment, but today they have become the source of a major discovery.

Scientists have proved, thanks to experiments performed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), that the paintings were made of oil, hundreds of years before the technique was “invented” in Europe. Results are published today in the peer-reviewed Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry.

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By Tim Golden and David Rohde
Published: April 10, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan: Dozens of Afghan men who were previously held by the United States at Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are now being tried here in secretive Afghan criminal proceedings based mainly on allegations forwarded by the American military.

The prisoners are being convicted and sentenced to as much as 20 years' confinement in trials that typically run between half an hour and an hour, said human rights investigators who have observed them. One early trial was reported to have lasted barely 10 minutes, an investigator said.

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April 9, 2008
By WILLIAM FOREMAN

HOTAN, China (AP) -- There was no sign of dissent in the bazaar, where men wove through the crowd on motorcycles with freshly butchered sheep draped behind them. But a Muslim merchant pinched his lips together with his fingers to show he could not talk freely.

"The Chinese are too bad, really bad," said Hama, who added that the Chinese had broken up a protest of about 200 people last month. He put his wrists together as if handcuffed. "I can't say more or I'll get arrested."

As China grapples with protests in Tibet, it also faces unrest on its Central Asian frontier.

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Archaeologists have discovered rare Buddha relics from the Diamer-Bhasha dam site in Pakistan.

Islamabad, April 4

According to a report in The International news, the relics include rare stone carvings, sculptures and statues of the Buddha.

"At least 1,000-1,500 different kinds of rock carvings, sculptures and statues have been found during the technical work, and the archaeology department expects huge consignment when full-fledged reservoir building is started," sources reported.

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In the country's poppy-growing provinces, farmers are being forced to sell their daughters to pay loans.

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Tibet and Xinjiang have the misfortune of having resources the Asian giant wants, and being on the path to resources it needs

March 25, 2008
Parag Khanna

It is difficult to find a westerner who does not intuitively support the idea of a free Tibet. But would Americans ever let go of Texas or California? For China, the Anglo-Russian great game for control of central Asia was neither inconclusive nor fruitless, something that cannot be said for Russia or Britain. Indeed, China was the big winner.

...Every backpacker who has visited Tibet and Xinjiang in the past decade knows that the Chinese empire is painfully real: the western region's going concern is undoubtedly Chinese Manifest Destiny. With the end of the civil war in 1949, China endeavoured immediately to overcome the "tyranny of terrain" and tame the interminable mountain and desert landscapes with the aim of exploiting vast natural assets, establishing penal colonies and military bases, and expand the Lebensraum for its exploding population.

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Islamabad, Mar 19

Pakistani archaeologists have found a rare 2,000-years-old Buddha sculpture in red sandstone in the historical town of Taxila.

The 13 by 12 cm statue, featuring Buddha sitting cross-legged on a throne supported by two lions, is believed to be a 2nd century AD marvel.

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