The Buddhist art of Pakistan (Lahore Museum)

Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Team No Limit Creativity, Business Consultants (NLC360.com, facebook); LahoreMuseum.org (VIRTUAL TOUR)

Lahore Museum exhibits (lahoremuseum.org/No Limit Creativity/NLC360.com)

Lahore Museum Virtual Tour (No Limit Creativity, business consultants, NLC360.com)

 
The Lahore Museum (لاہور میوزیم لاہور عجائب گھر) was originally established in 1865-66 on the site of the hall of the 1864 Punjab Exhibition (Government of Pakistan).
 

Maitreya, 5th cent. BCE (MOW)

It was shifted in 1894 to its present site on The Mall in Lahore, in the Punjab region of India (which 1947's Partition became the country of Pakistan due to upheavals created by British colonial rule).

Rudyard Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling, was one of the earliest and most famous curators of the museum. Over 250,000 visitors were registered in 2005. The current building complex that houses the Lahore Museum was designed by the well-known architect Sir Ganga Ram.

Gandhara Buddhist art (WQ)

The Museum is the biggest museum in the new country and full of exquisite Gandhara (Greco-Indian fusion) art. Many rooms have been under repair for a long time, and others still show a rather old-fashioned and often rudimentary display of objects, with captions only in Urdu (the local language).

There are important relics from the Indus Valley Civilization (Indus River Valley), Ghandara and Greco-Bactrian periods as well as some Tibetan and Nepalese work on display. The museum has a number of Greco-Buddhist sculptures, Mughal and Pahari paintings on display. The Fasting Buddha from the Ghandara period is one of the most famous objects of the museum. More

What was Gandhāra?

Gandhāra (Sanskrit गन्धार, Pashto ګندارا‎, Urdu گندھارا‎) was an ancient kingdom in the Swat and Kabul river valleys and the Pothohar Plateau [that border modern Iran in the southwest in the province of Seistan-Balochistan west of ancient Mohenjo-daro].

These are in the modern-day states of northern Pakistan and northeastern Afghanistan (Gandhara Civilization). Its main cities were Purushapura (modern Peshawar), literally meaning "City of Men" (Encyclopædia Britannica: Gandhara) and Takshashila (modern Taxila). More

 

Lahore Museum: A Gallery of Our Culture, Guided Tour cover (library.tcdc.or.th)

View virtual tour properly using Flash Player Version 9.0.28 or later (NLC360.com).

First images of the Buddha, Gandhara, Lahore Museum, Pakistan (Bijapuri Ed Sentner/flickr)

The First Images of the Buddha (photos)

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Editorial (dawn.com, 6-27-14); Wiki

The first anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha were Gandhara art (Boonlieng)

Priceless Buddhist treasures were intercepted while being smuggled out of Pakistan, part of Pashtun Afghanistan, in the region of ancient Gandhara, India (BigStory.AP org)

  

[Breaking the] Fasting Buddha

Kashmir on the Pakistan side (Vivek Aryan)

(Dawn) Truly is it said, reality is stranger than fiction -- especially here in Pakistan. Since 1894, when it was donated upon being discovered, the Gandhara-era statue of the "Fasting Buddha" has been considered the jewel of the Lahore Museum.

Museum Maitreya Buddha

Images of it adorn postcards and newsreels, and proud [Muslim] citizens make it a point to take visitors to see it as an indication that whatever else the country may be, a cultural wasteland it is not.

This statue, priceless in terms of historical significance, has for a long time had a crack on the left arm. Investigations by this paper [dawn.com], upon receiving a tip-off, have confirmed an unbelievable story:

Back in April, 2012, the crack widened while being cleaned and the statue was given over to the museum laboratory’s tender ministrations. But instead of the scientific, delicate, and professional handling that an artifact of this stature demands, an attempt was made to fix it by applying the common adhesive epoxy, which remains [shockingly] evident on the statue’s surface and has caused irreparable harm.

Where in the world is Pakistan? It only came into existence in 1947 after the colonial British Partition of India. Along with Afghanistan, it was formerly Gandhara, India. Then the U.S. started meddling; now we bomb it secretly.

 

One of the priceless Afghan treasures of Mes Aynak

The trail of destruction isn’t hard to trace, given the standards at the moment: The current lab technician worked earlier as a driver and gallery attendant, while the lab "conservationist" used to be a peon.
 
What can be made of this but the utter disregard Pakistanis tend to show towards history and culture? This is hardly the only example of this mindset. It turns out that 2012 was an inauspicious year for Gandhara-era [Buddhist] artifacts. That summer, the police intercepted a large consignment of such relics that had apparently been about to be smuggled out of the country [see photo of looted Buddhist art above].

Gandhara is full of earliest Buddhist treasures

But during the recovery process, the police ended up damaging many of them, unprepared perhaps for their weight and certainly unmindful of their value. In the case of the Lahore Museum, the qualified chemist employed at the lab was retired in 2009. No replacement has been found. This is unsurprising, given the importance attached to archaeology and history in the country.

Afghan Buddhist monastery statue 700 AD (Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara)

• The Greco-Indian art of ancient Gandhara:

First Buddhas, Gandhara

(Wiki) Greco-Buddhist art is the artistic manifestation of Greco-Buddhism, a cultural syncretism between the Classical Greek culture and Buddhism, which developed over a period of close to 1000 years in Central Asia, between the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, and the destructive Islamic conquests of the 7th century AD. Greco-Buddhist art is characterized by the strong idealistic realism and sensuous description of Hellenistic art and the FIRST representations of the Buddha in human form...

Future Buddha Maitreya, Gandhara-style, Greco-Indian Buddhist fusion art of Afghanistan, Pakistan, ancient India, San Francisco Asian Art Museum (Boonlieng/flickr.com)

 
Ancient Greece (in India and Persia)

Kushan Maitreya, Greco-India

Bactria was under direct Greek control for more than two centuries from the conquests of Alexander the Great in 332 BC to the end of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom around 125 BC. The art of Bactria was almost perfectly Hellenistic as shown by the archaeological remains of Greco-Bactrian cities such as Alexandria on the Oxus (Ai-Khanoum), or the numismatic art of the Greco-Bactrian kings, often considered as the best of the Hellenistic world, and including the largest silver and gold coins ever minted by the Greeks.
 
When Buddhism expanded in Central Asia from the 1st century AD, Bactria saw the results of the Greco-Buddhist syncretism arrive on its territory from India, and a new blend of sculptural representation remained until the Islamic invasions.
 
The most striking of these realizations are the Buddhas of Bamiyan. They tend to vary between the 5th and the 9th century AD. Their style is strongly inspired by Hellenistic culture. More

Western China

"Heroic gesture of the Bodhisattva," the Buddha-to-be, 6th-7th century terracotta, Tumshuq (Xinjiang) where the Chinese empire extended from the Far East into Central Asia, the Land of Buddhism and the Buddha (wiki).

 

[WISDOM QUARTERLY EDITORIAL: Buddhism made it to ancient "Greece," the Hellenistic world as a vast empire encroaching into India and Persia, before it ever arrived in China. It co-originated in Afghanistan (the Buddha's likely birthplace according to Dr. Ranajit Pal) and "India" (the Kingdom of Magadha to be specific as there was no unified India at that time), where the Buddha had traveled to establish the Teaching and the first monastic Community, which was soon augmented by many Shakyan princes and princesses, relatives of the Buddha from the area of Gandhara, Afghanistan, Indo-Pakistan, Taxila (Takkashila), Indo-Iran, and lands (the modern "stans") likely under the influence of the capital of Kapilavastu, the Buddha's hometown, the kingdom he would have inherited somewhere between modern Bamiyan and Kabul, once a fabulously rich and cosmopolitan crossroads on the Silk Route.]

• BUST: The original representation of the Buddha in gray schist, currently dated to 2nd-3rd century CE showing Hellenistic influences characteristic of the Gandhara art of Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan (British Museum/Britannica.com)

Maitreya in USA (Boonlieng)

The art of the Tarim Basin, also called Serindian art, is the art that developed from the 2nd through the 11th century AD in Serindia or Xinjiang, the extreme western region of China that forms part of Central Asia. It derives from the art of the Gandhara and clearly combines Indian traditions with Greek and Roman influences.
 
Buddhist missionaries travelling on the Silk Road introduced this art, along with Buddhism itself, into Serindia, where it mixed with Chinese and Persian influences.

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The Buddha's golden reliquary urn of Bimaran

Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; British Museum; Wiki edit 

Greco-Buddhist gold art of Afghanistan, the Bimaran Reliquary (britishmuseum.org)

 

The Golden Bimaran Urn
BritishMuseum.org; edited by Wisdom Quarterly

The soapstone casket containing the urn

This golden urn and these items were found buried in a stone casket found in Stupa No. 2 at Bimaran, Gandhara, near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan.

When it was found by the archaeologist Charles Masson during his work in Afghanistan between 1833 and 1838, the stone casket contained coins.

The piece was dated as having been created or buried in the 1st century AD, which is when the coins are thought to date from, on the assumption that those coins were interred in it in the first place, when they were almost certainly added later when it was re-interred after its precious relics were looted. 

Rare Buddha pose, light dress (BM/W)

The priceless gold, jewel-studded, cylindrical relic container set with almandine garnets bears a frieze with one of the earliest depictions of the Buddha from the northwest region of Gandhara (ancient India).

The reliquary was found inside an inscribed steatite (soapstone) casket. The inscription records that the reliquary contained some of the actual bones of the Buddha. [See "Bones of the Buddha" (PBS TV) on "Vethadipa" and Cremating the Buddha's body (sutra)].

• VIDEO: Two Buddhist Specials on PBS

The PBS special "Bones of the Buddha" explains the discovery of some of the relics (WQ)

 

Relics can look like pearls (mahastupa.org)

However, when found in the 19th century, the lid of the reliquary and the bones were missing. The relic was deposited with small burnt pearls [a good description of genuine relics], beads of precious and semi-precious stones, and four Azes II coins. The coins, and thus the reliquary, can be dated... More
 
Evidence of the Buddha's Ukraine connection

The Buddha reclining into final nirvana (paranirvana), Gandharan art (wiki)

 

Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, all around Kapilavastu (wiki)

The outrageous claim by a Ukrainian scholar that the Buddha may have been Ukrainian is quite possible -- so long as one extends ancient Indo-Scythia to include faraway Crimea and Ukraine high in the north of Asia.
 
The Scythians might well be the Shakyas of later Sakkastan. But history here is very muddled by nationalistic Indian claims, Nepalese counterclaims, British archeological discoveries and deceptions, such as the Jonesian frauds detected by Dr. Pal.

In any case, this magnificent relic container suggests that Siddhartha Gautama came from far north of India, somewhere west of the Indus river. If that is not the case, it is hard to imagine why people under a Gandharan/Indo-Pakistani king would have been involved in re-interring the Buddha's relics rather than plundering the treasure.

Whose coins were they?

The British Museum (britishmuseum.org)

(WIKI) King Azes II (reigned circa 35-12 BCE) may have been the last Indo-Scythian king on the northern Indian subcontinent (now Pakistan as of 1947's Partition).

However, due to new research by R.C. Senior (2008, "The Final Nail in the Coffin of Azes II," Journal of the Oriental Numismatic Society 197, 2008, pp. 25-27), his actual existence is now seriously in doubt, and "his" coins and so on are now thought to refer to those of Azes I.

Gandhara/Bactria/Afghanistan (Boonlieng/flickr)

After the death of Azes II, the rule of the Indo-Scythians in northwestern India and Pakistan finally crumbled with the conquest of the Kushans, one of the five tribes of the Yuezhi who had lived in [Greco-Persian] Bactria for more than a century, who were then expanding into India to create a Kushan Empire. Soon after, the Parthians invaded from the west. More

And what it all goes to show is that history is a mess, just as the Buddha spoke of countless empires, kingdoms, and republics that rose to glory to invariably crumble. Even a "world monarch," or chakravartin, ruling in accordance with dharma in the noble/warrior-caste ideal, is not exempt from this revolving cycle. Who were these world ruler?

Lost Treasures of Buddhist Afghanistan (video)

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; NationalGeographic.com, May 5, 2014

2014 Afghan landslide

(NatGeo) It had more treasures than we can comprehend as a magnificent crossroads between East and West at the foothills of the Himalayas (Hindu Kush), an agrarian territory that became cosmopolitan by the influx of travelers and traders and a world-teacher who went in search of enlightenment and an end to all suffering and found it in a neighboring kingdom in India. His success came back to this faraway land to give rise to Buddhism and send it on its way west and north along the same Silk Road that brought it so much traffic, riches, culture, and eventually imperial invasions and war.
 

Paul Fitzgerald and Liz Gould (invisiblehistory.com)

Ancient Buddhist caves of India (video)

Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; History Channel, "Ancient Aliens"

Bamiyan near the real Kapilavastu

The Ajanta cave complex is not, in fact, the world's oldest series of Buddhist caves. That honor would likely go to the cliff caves and former monastic residences in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, which are 2,600 years old (not in Nepal as we are taught; see RanajitPal.com for startling and controversial details).

 

The Buddha's extended family, many of whom became Buddhist monastics during his life chose to live nearby and travel to see him in Magadha, India to the east. Prominent family members included: 

Ancient "India" (Maha Bharat) used to extend west to Iran (Persia), when Pakistan and Afghanistan were frontier lands in a region known as Gandhara. They only became separate countries recently after British partition.

 

His stepmother (Maha Pajapati, the first Buddhist nun in history), his former wife (Bimba Devi, Subhaddaka, Yasodhara, Rahula-mata, "Rahula's mother," the expert debater Ven. Bhaddakaccānā), his son (Rahula, who became "foremost in doing quiet good"), his half-brother (Nanda), his half-sister (Sundari-Nanda), his father (Suddhodana, not a monastic but enlightened while still a king), and his many cousins (such as beloved Ananda who memorized the "Discourse Collection" or sutras as heard from the Buddha, as well as Anuruddha and others), and at least one famous in-law, Devadatta (the Buddhist "Judas" figure), Yasodhara's brother.

Physical descriptions of Siddhartha with curly black hair, golden skin, and blue eyes make him far more likely to be Central Asian rather than Indian as we imagine it today.

  

The former northwest Indian frontier

His biological mother, Maya Devi, who passed away a week after his birth, was reborn in a world called Tavatimsa, where the Buddha visited her to teach her the liberating Dharma he taught the rest of his family on Earth. (Maya Devi's sister and co-wife, Maha Pajapati, had both married Siddhartha Gautama's father, King Suddhodana; she adopted him right away, raising the prince, heir-apparent, and future Buddha as her own son).

 

Many family members, particularly females, would likely have chose to remain in the vicinity of ancient Kapilavastu, the capital of the Shakya clan's territory (janapada), after ordaining. They would have practiced the Buddha's teachings in familiar company, adopting a wandering ascetic ethos with monasteries serving in a capacity more like California's missions, with itinerant religieux traveling between them up the Silk Road through a prosperous crossroads (now impoverished, war torn Afghanistan) These connected caves alongside massive Buddha statues contain the world's oldest oil paintings.

(C2C) Michael Cremo is not the only "forbidden archeologist." Johnathan Gray (beforeus.com) from Australia talks about amazing discoveries that get at explanations beyond mainstream filtered-science, which seems bewitched by its "consensus reality" that ignores sacred histories (such as the Brahminical Vedas or Buddhist Jatakas), extraterrestrial visitations, mythologies, and discoveries with interpretations such as a former global civilization and advanced technologies superior to what we have now. The world and human life on it is aeons old.

But how the Ajanta Caves was created remains a mystery. Like the great pyramids of Egypt and precise stone structures all around the world -- like the world's largest pyramid in Bosnia -- they could not have been constructed by humans without extraterrestrial assistance. "Visitors" with advanced technology, whether remembered as mythical figures (akasha-devas, Sakka, the catumaharajikas, asuras, nagas, garudas, yakkhas, and gandharvas -- or "shining ones" from space, the Four Great Sky Kings, titans, reptilians, avians, celestial ogres, and celestial messengers) or as verifiably "ancient aliens" depicted on the eponymous History Channel program. 

 

Of course, it is more fun and esteem-building to imagine our clever forbears, we humans with primitive tools, created these astounding masterpieces without help, direction, or advanced technology. Homo sapiens, hooray. Shining ones (devas)? We'll see it when we believe it, because it will seem to take an act of faith to see what the evidence has been trying to tell us for centuries.

Buddhism in ancient Greece (King Milinda)

Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly, "The Questions of King Milinda" [Menander] (Miln), Milindapañha (as.miami.edu/phi/bio/Buddha/Milinda)

Ancient Greek influence expanded to ancient India's northwestern frontier (Indo-Greeks)

Greek King Menander I (Milinda) engages Ven. Nagasena on the Dharma in Bactria

 

Gold Greek Buddha coin (as.miami.edu)

Because of his Greek (Western) heritage, the king of Bactria asks many questions that occur to Westerners today, which makes this work particularly valuable to modern readers. These are not normally raised in an Indian (Eastern) context.

As a consequence of the conquest of the Persian empire, the Greeks gained control of Bactria -- modern Afghanistan -- together with northern India. The local Greek rulers managed to establish their independence from the Seleucid Empire, which first held control over the area. 

 

Greek rule of Bactria continued until about 165 BC when the Shakas destroyed the Bactrian kingdom. Greeks continued to rule, however, in southern Afghanistan and northwestern India (Gandhara) for another 150 years. The most important of these kings was Menander I, known as "Milinda" in Buddhist sources, who ruled about 115-90 BC. Buddhism had reached the area [due to early converts in the Shakya clan, the Buddha's extended family, which was likely from this wealthy frontier area along the Silk Road even as the Buddha taught far to the east in India (Afghanistan has Buddhist art and architecture such as monastic complexes and statues as old as Buddhism, such as Mes Aynak)]. In addition, missionaries [were sent out by the Buddha] and later by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka more than a century earlier.

Buddhists in ancient Greece

Afghan Buddhist artifact from Mes Aynak, Afghanistan. This archaeological site is set to be destroyed by Chinese miners eager to extract mineral deposits (Jay Price/Getty Images/TheGuardian co uk)

  

Why did Ven. Nagasena go to Bactria? In the land of the Bactrian Greeks there was a city called Sagala, a great center of trade. Rivers and hills beautified it, delightful landscapes surrounded it, and it possessed many parks, gardens, woods, lakes, and lotus-ponds. Its king was Milinda, a man who was learned, experienced, intelligent, and competent. At the proper times he carefully observed all of the appropriate Brahminical rites with regard to things past, future, and present. As a disputant he was hard to assail, hard to overcome, and he was recognized as a prominent sectarian teacher.

 

One day a large company of enlightened disciples (arhats) of the Buddha living in a well-protected area in the Himalayas sent a messenger to Ven. Nagasena, who was then residing at Ashoka Park in Patna, asking him to come, as they wished to see him. Nagasena immediately complied by vanishing and miraculously appearing before them.

 

The arhats said to him: "That King Milinda, Nagasena, constantly harasses the Sangha (monastic order) with questions and counter-questions, with arguments and counter-arguments. Please go, Nagasena, and quench him!" 

 

"Save Mes Aynak" demonstration, UCLA/Westwood Federal Building, summer 2013 (WQ)

  

Nagasena replied: "Never mind one king, this King Milinda! If all of the kings of India would come to me with their questions, I could well dispose of them, and they would be no more trouble after that! You may go to Sagala without any fear whatsoever!" The elders (theras) went to Sagala, lighting up the city with their saffron robes, which shone like lamps, and bringing with them the fresh breeze of the sacred mountains.

 

Ven. Nagasena stayed at Sankheyya Hermitage together with a great number of monastics. King Milinda, accompanied by a large retinue of Greeks, went to him, greeted him in a friendly and courteous manner, and sat respectfully to one side. Nagasena returned these kind greetings, and his courtesy pleased the king's heart.

The king said, "Ven. Nagasena, will you converse with me?"

"Your majesty, if you will converse with me as the wise converse, I will, but if you converse with me as kings converse, I will not."

"Ven. Nagasena, how do the wise converse?"

"Your majesty, when the wise converse, whether they become entangled by their opponents’ arguments or extricate themselves, whether they or their opponents are convicted of error, whether their own superiority or that of their opponents’ is established, nothing in all this can make them angry. Thus, your majesty, do the wise converse."

"And how, venerable, do kings converse?"

"Your majesty, when kings converse, they advance a proposition, and whoever opposes it, they order that person’s punishment, saying, ‘Punish this person!’ Thus, your majesty, do kings converse."

"Venerable, I will converse as the wise converse, not as kings do. Let your worship converse in all confidence. Let your worship converse as unrestrainedly as if with another monastic, novice, lay disciple, or a keeper of the monastery grounds. Be unafraid!"

"Very well, your majesty," said the elder in assent. More