Plight of Buddhist art

[Valerie J Roebuck]

>Venkatraman Iyer writes:
>
><< BBC broadcasts that Buddhist statues are to be destroyed:
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1192000/1192195.stm

>Can Indologists do something? >>

I feel so helpless about this.  I believe that previously, eminent
archaeologists etc have been able to use contacts with the less extreme
factions in Afghanistan to protect the country's most important works of
art.  But this doesn't seem to be working any more.

I'm left with this feeling that if--just supposing--an extreme faction had
taken over in France, and was intent on destroying the contents of the
Louvre, the world would have found some way of stopping them!

It is Ven. Tantra who is mistaken here.  And I don't find his posting helpful.

Valerie J Roebuck
Manchester, UK

>
Ven. Tantra writes:

>Our sympathies go out -- but this seems to be in the hands of political
>actors. And here itís better to eschew the political.
>
>Two points:
>
>1. BBC reports that the Taleban ëmistakenly think that Buddhists worship
>the Buddha and that the statues are therefore idols.í It is the BBC who is
>mistaken here.
>
>2. Bearing in mind the legendary literature, one really does wonder what
>al-Bouddah might have done had caught his devotees fashioning images of
>his human form -- which he had apparently prohibited -- and worshipping
>those very forbidden idols.
>
>VT