The Collapse of the Buddhist Pagoda – Kabul
The BBC has reported on 12th April, 1998 on the collapse of the Buddhist pagoda located high on a hill overlooking Kabul , Afghanistan . The reported said the panoramic view up there was stunning.
This pagoda was built during the Kushan Empire which existed for hundreds of years in Central Asia , starting circa 100 B.CE. (Before this Common Era)
Emperor Kanishka helped to build this vast empire and he was undoubtedly sympathetic to, and strongly influenced by Buddhism. For a period early in the life of their empire the Kushans had Kabul as their capital city.
Buddhist Pagoda – Kabul
On a steep hill overlooking the town a pagoda was built, some 30 meters high and when new it would have been capped with a 20 meter high copper canopy, burnished and perhaps gilded.
It must have been a magnificent sight!
At each floor there would have been finely carved, painted and decorated Buddha statues, each with the familiar Mahayana ‘aura’ (or halo) around his head, looking out in all directions of the compass.
The Buddha could see out around the universe and bestow his infinite compassion, loving kindness, sympathetic joy, and equanimity: which summates to infinite wisdom and goodness.
It was during the Kushan Empire in particular that Buddhism flourished and developed into the forms and styles that we now recognize as Buddhist. Emperor Kanishka was a great patron of the arts and many new ideas were developed.
The pagoda was man’s testimony in stone and metal to the greatness of the Buddha and his teachings. Thankfully the teachings still live on.
The collapse: of great symbolic significance
It had already been weakened by Soviet Tank artillery target practice and had two areas of weakness. Its collapse happened on a dark, moonless night towards the end of March, 1998. Residents, living in the village at the foot of the hill heard a sound like an explosion.
The tower’s collapse has a powerful symbolic significance to us all, particularly those of us living through the last ten years.
The young reporter said that the pagoda was at least 1600 years old.
(It was probably built in defiance of, and in contrast to the bloody, murderous Roman Empire and its new “universal” religion.)
What is known, too, is that this pagoda was the original, the archetypal pagoda design concept which spread throughout the Northern Buddhist world to the east; there are many examples in China and Japan still standing today.
So, what was lost on the 12th April, 1996, was something of immense cultural significance for Asia and the world, and a most wonderful example of human imagination and creativity.
Within the following two years, the Bamiyan Buddha statues, too, were to be destroyed.
May I call here now, for the recognition of this site as a world cultural heritage site and for the establishment of proper documentation of the design and construction of this archetypal Buddhist pagoda. Later, a more enlightened generation may then be able to reconstruct something worthy for comparison to the ‘ Seven Wonders of the World .’
“All it takes for the Buddha-Dhamma to disappear,
– is for Buddhists to do nothing”
Agghadhamma, January, 2008
source:nba srilanka