Skip to main content

Islamabad Museum pulls rare Buddha statues from reserves

Rare artefacts on display at Islamabad Museum. — Photos by the writer
Rare artefacts on display at Islamabad Museum. — Photos by the writer

ISLAMABAD: After decades locked away in its reserves, the Islamabad Museum recently pulled out a statue of the head of Buddha, an artefact from the 3rd to 4th century AD that was discovered by the first Italian archaeological mission in Pakistan.

The statue was excavated in the Swat Valley by a mission led by Dr Giuseppe Tucci. Although the mission began digging in the valley in 1956, the artefact was excavated sometime in the 60s and it was last displayed in a museum in 1997.

“It is extremely rare to find Lord Buddha’s statues made of stucco from Swat. Swat Valley is predominantly home to stone sculptures,” Islamabad Museum Director Dr Abdul Ghafoor Lone said.

He added that stucco scultures of Buddha were frequently found in Taxila and Afghanistan.

What also makes this head of Buddha unique are its sharp, feminine features, with long hair brushed back and wrapped over and around a halo and slanted, feline eyes.

Dr Lone said that Buddha is commonly seen wearing his hair in a bun, with straight eyes.

Belonging to the Kushan period, the extraordinary sculpture was discovered from one of the earliest Buddhist Stupa Buddhkara I from the 3rd century BC, a contemporary of the World Heritage Site Dharma Rajika in Taxila.

Another three terracotta heads of Buddha have also been pulled out of the museum’s reserves and put on display.

The three rare artefacts are from the 2nd to 3rd century AD. They were excavated by British archaeologist Sir John Marshal.

Special attention was given to sculpting the heads of Buddha compared to the rest of the body, and finer material was used as well.

“When the White Huns burnt down Buddhist monasteries and stupas, heads were buried and preserved under the collapsed roofs. The bodies, which were not given much attention, deteriorated and were destroyed over the centuries. This is why the heads of the Buddha have survived to this date,” Dr Lone said.

Equally stunning is the schist stone panel recovered by Italian archaeologists from Swat.

The grey panel is from the 2nd century AD.

Dr Lone said the panel “depicts a temple on fire, while Buddha is seen seated inside and the Kasyapa brothers are trying to put out the flames.”

The art piece symbolises Buddha’s triumph over the fire snake, he explained.

Published in Dawn, December 1st, 2019



from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/2Y0Vk0z
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trump says he urged team to ‘slow’ COVID-19 testing

US President Donald Trump said Saturday he was encouraging health officials in his administration to slow down coronavirus testing, arguing that increased tests lead to more cases being discovered. The president has claimed falsely on several occasions that surges of COVID-19 in several states can be explained by greater numbers of diagnostic tests. At his first rally since the outbreak forced nationwide shutdowns in March, Trump told the crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma that testing was a “double-edged sword.” The United States — which has more deaths and cases than any other country — has carried out more than 25 million coronavirus tests, placing it outside the top 20 countries in the world, per capita. “Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases,” Trump argued. “So I said to my people ‘slow the testing down.’ They test and they test.” It was not clear from Trump’s tone if he was playing to the crowd, who ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sir Anwer Pervez, richest Pakistani British businessman, loses £432m in pandemic

Sir Anwar Pervez OBE, the founder and chairman of Bestway Cash & Carry has lost £432 million during the coronavirus pandemic to bring him down to No 50 on the richest British people list. The list has 1,000 people and is published by the Sunday Times newspaper . Pervez was at No 42 previously.  The 2020 list of the UK’s richest shows its first fall in wealth in a decade as Britain’s wealthiest people lost tens of billions of pounds in the coronavirus pandemic, the Sunday Times reported in its Rich List 2020. The newspaper, which has produced the respected annual ranking of the country’s 1,000 wealthiest people since 1989, found the past two months had resulted in the super-rich losing £54 billion ($65 billion). More than half of the billionaires in Britain had seen drops in their worth by as much as £6b, a decrease in their collective wealth unprecedented since 2009 and the financial crisis. The Hinduja brothers, who topped last year’s list with a £22b fortune, saw among ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Despite reservations about jury, Pakistan to implement FATF reforms: envoy

WASHINGTON: Despite its reservations about the fairness of the jury which is to determine Pakistan’s performance against terror financing, the government is committed to implementing its action plan for dealing with this issue, says Islamabad’s Washington envoy Asad Majeed Khan. In a conversation with a prominent US scholar George Perkovich, recorded at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Monday afternoon, Ambassador Khan said the actions that Pakistan had taken so far to eliminate terror financing were “reflective of the political will”. “We feel that we have done a lot. We are also clear and determined to do more,” said the envoy while responding to a question about a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held in Orlando last week, which asked Pakistan to implement its own action plan for eliminating terror financing by October. Failing to do so could put Pakistan on a blacklist of violators and bring strict economic sanctions too. “But we w...
Post a Comment
Read more